


Reveille

by severinne



Series: The Wind and Its Satellite [7]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Bondage, Communication Failure, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Horseback Riding, M/M, Porn With Plot, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:27:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A horseback riding excursion in the Mojave gives Pike and McCoy the opportunity to test the breadth and limits of trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The thirteenth part of The Wind and Its Satellite, and by far the longest story in the series.

Rare were the mornings that McCoy got to share breakfast with Pike in the early light that always flooded his kitchen in a soothing orange glow. These modest sunrise meals always calmed him with the easy familiarity of his Chris’ company, especially on mornings such as this, when McCoy had arrived in the dead of night, unannounced and uninvited, directly from a late shift at Starfleet Medical.

They were thankfully seldom, even more uncommon than these breakfasts, but last night had been another of those occasions when McCoy had stumbled unthinkingly to Pike’s door long past midnight and keyed his way inside, wearily shedding his hospital scrubs as he blindly navigated the darkened living space towards the bedroom. Naked and silent, he had tried to slip beneath the covers without waking his lover, and as always he had failed.

 _C’mere._ Though groggy with sleep, Pike had found the strength to draw him into his arms, kneading the knotted ache at the base of his spine and combing his fingers through his freshly washed hair. _Want to talk about it?_

He always asked, and McCoy always refused, pressing his face into Pike’s shoulder and mutely shaking his head, back muscles tense beneath Pike’s hands until they gradually took control and guided him into place. Last night, his Chris had chosen to coax him onto his back, settling carefully between his splayed thighs and layering open-mouthed kisses over his chest and shoulders and neck as though he weren’t disgusted by the bitter antiseptic clinging to his skin, as though he couldn’t tell that he was only ever half-cleansed of blood. 

Last night, however, something inside him that normally stayed safely buried had rebelled at so much kindness, had reached for Pike and tried to force him on faster, harder. Except that Pike had stopped him, had held his wrists down against the bed and refused to let go as he slipped slowly inside, covering him and kissing him everywhere he could reach but never once releasing his hands until the end of their slow, torturously tender fuck.

Even now, eased by sleep and sunrise, McCoy remembered the uncompromising grip of Pike’s strong fingers around his wrists and shuddered inwardly with some nameless longing. It was closer to what he might have needed, but never quite _there_. Never quite enough…

A fresh cup of black coffee slid into view of his lowered eyes. McCoy blinked owlishly at its lightly steaming surface, coming back to awareness at the caress of a steady hand through his hair and down the back of his neck.

‘Drink up.’ A kiss landed in the mess of his hair, and Pike circled around the kitchen island to return to his chair and his half-eaten cereal. ‘The first two cups clearly didn’t do the job.’

‘Thanks.’ He effortlessly invested the single word with both gratitude and sarcasm before taking a weary sip, knowing full well that a whole carafe of the stuff would do nothing for his exhaustion. Even dropping off mere moments after his orgasm last night had only allowed for a few hours sleep before it was time to begin their separate days anew: Pike to a round of early-morning advisory meetings with his final-year cadets, McCoy to his own quarters for a quick change of clothes and excuses for Jim before joining him in another pointless fundamentals class that had everything to do with starship operations and nothing to do with medicine. Bitterly resigned to his fate, McCoy tried a second, more robust swallow from his cup and willed the caffeine to work its magic.

‘Food might help, too,’ Pike noted mildly. 

McCoy glared balefully over the edge of his cup at the cereal he had thrice refused already. ‘Too early,’ he mumbled, squinting hard as he tried to reckon out when Pike had become so adept at reading the internal monologue of his exhaustion. Unperturbed, Pike smiled calmly back.

‘Is that the secret to your sunny disposition?’ He nudged at the heavy glass fruit bowl poised at the exact centre of his kitchen island, sliding it closer to him. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘I’m not letting you leave here on an empty stomach.’

With a roll of his eyes, McCoy glanced scornfully past the plentiful extraterrestrials that filled out Pike’s selection of fresh fruit before alighting on a simple, honest green apple: a glossy aberration among the strangely hued and thick skinned things from planets McCoy couldn’t even name, no matter if each came with a ludicrous anecdote from Pike’s illustrious career. Knowing full well that Pike would not have bought anything so pedestrian as Earth apples for himself, he claimed it for the offering that it was and reached simultaneously for a knife from the block further along the countertop.

‘Thought I was supposed to be the doctor here,’ he grumbled sourly, cradling the apple in one hand and deftly passing the sharp blade down through its core, bisecting the fruit into two equal halves and setting one aside.

‘I’ll start believing that when you start taking better care of yourself.’ Pike glanced up from his cereal, eyebrow arching as he spotted the halved apple on the countertop. ‘Why do you do that?’

He blinked at the non sequitur, lack of sleep still dragging on his mind. ‘Sorry?’

’Your apple. You always slice it in half before you eat it.’

McCoy ducked his head, poked at the discarded half of his apple with the knife. ‘Old habit,’ he muttered. ‘Back home, when I used to take my horse out, I’d bring apples and we’d split them. Guess I just got used to cutting them in half.’ He glanced up a touch self-consciously, and frowned at the bright attentiveness in Pike’s eyes, the sort that seldom led anywhere good.

‘You ride?’ he asked keenly. McCoy’s eyebrow shot up warningly.

‘If that’s meant to be some lewd joke, Chris, I swear to God…’

‘And you think _I’m_ the one who’s always on about sex?’ Pike grinned widely, shook his head. ‘No, I do mean horses.’

‘Oh.’ He took a bite from his halved apple to cover his embarrassment. ‘Yeah,’ he added eventually, realizing that Pike was still waiting on an answer. ‘Or I used to, anyway.’

‘I miss it,’ Pike said, spooning up the last of his cereal. ‘I grew up with horses, used to go back to them whenever I was staying planetside. There were times, years ago, when Tango was the best friend I had. Beautiful chestnut creature, most patient soul I’ve ever known…’

McCoy hummed evasively, and twitched inwardly when Pike’s eye lifted to him expectantly. He saw the question there before it was even asked, but there was a reason McCoy seldom talked about his life before Starfleet anymore. It just wouldn’t do, dwelling on things he could never have again.

‘Tell me about your horse,’ Pike asked softly. ‘The one who used to have the other half of that apple.’

But there were very few things McCoy could refuse his lover these days. ‘Tara,’ he admitted, a wistful pleasure already spreading through his chest at saying her name out loud. ‘She’s a Palomino saddlebred, just shy of seventeen hands. Lively, sassy creature…'

‘You loved that horse,’ Pike stated matter-of-factly.

‘Still do,’ he said, examining the shape of his bite in the apple’s white flesh. ‘She was young, healthy. Hopefully still alive, though Jocelyn’s probably sold her off out of spite by now. She was always jealous of that horse, the damn woman.’

He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth; he hated to inflict any mention of the ex-wife on Chris’ hearing but the bitterness and loss had slipped out without thought or will. Fearful of further questions or awkward sympathies, McCoy glanced warily upward. 

But Pike merely smiled back, perhaps a little sadly, and helped himself to the second half of his apple.


	2. Chapter 2

McCoy lingered at the spaceport viewing platform long enough to see Jim’s shuttle vanish eastward on a searing streak of plasma before turning away and taking the stairs back down to solid ground.

A lonesome ache settled like a familiar coat over his shoulders as he idled back towards the dormitories, the walk uncomfortably silent without Jim’s rapid-fire conversation for company. He had sent Jim off on his field exam declaring his eagerness for the break he would enjoy from the incessant chatter and overblown ego but he suspected that even Jim knew he had been talking complete bullshit. His own exams were complete, and with his research placement not due to start for another week, he had nothing to keep him occupied other than a handful of dreaded shifts at the student clinic.

Maybe if his Chris were around… but he had neither seen nor heard from the Captain for a conspicuous few weeks now. No doubt he was busy with those shiny new command-track graduates of his, all brought up to that ship-shape Starfleet standard Pike personified so well, the same standard Jim was chasing so fervently. Spending his weekend patching up the least impressive of those cadets and decontaminating one bizarre sexual experiment or another somehow didn’t strike the same ambitious note.

No surprise, really, that neither of them had time for him these days.

His sour mood had darkened to a roiling, introspective cloud by the time he reached his quarters. Lurching on uneven autopilot, he keyed the door open and shuffled inside, stubbornly ignoring everything in his normally shared quarters save the cabinet beneath his desk. 

He reacted too late to the intruder seizing him from behind.

A solid body pinned him face first to the wall, tugged his arm sharply behind his back before he could comprehend his own helplessness. Teeth gritted, heart pounding, McCoy twisted savagely, kicked backward and threw an elbow that earned him a muffled grunt and temporary freedom. He spun to retaliate but scarcely glimpsed his attacker before a swift foot tripped his legs from under him and McCoy fell to the floor, exhaling roughly as the other man dropped upon him and expertly held him down.

‘Your hand-to-hand could use some work, Doctor.’

McCoy snarled, tense beneath his captor. ‘Bite me,’ he snapped.

‘Don’t tempt me.’ Pike flashed his teeth in a pleased grin. ‘You’re certainly looking delicious enough.’

An involuntary blush warmed McCoy’s face, his tightly coiled limbs easing into Pike’s hold. ‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ he muttered, squirming slightly as his body responded instinctively to Pike’s heat and weight, the subtle musk of his aftershave that he had gone without for those too-long weeks. His heart was still racing strong in his chest, adrenaline flooding his veins with the impulse to fight but he let Pike’s hands around his biceps and the tangle of their legs keep him tantalizingly trapped instead. His tongue darted over his dry lips, secretly pleased to see Pike’s darkening eyes flick after the movement.

‘Should I try again?’ Pike asked softly, eyes still fixed on his mouth. His body shifted subtly closer, close enough to bring their lips together before McCoy could muster an appropriately sarcastic response that evaporated beneath the heartfelt welcome of that kiss. With a quiet hum of approval, McCoy parted his lips beneath the coaxing of Pike’s tongue, a heavier groan building in his throat as Pike delved deeper into him. The fingers pinning his arms clenched tighter as Pike’s legs moved against his own, stretching out until their hips pressed flush together. He felt the hard ridge of Pike’s arousal against him and bucked upward, seeking a harder friction than the slow and sweet slide of lips and tongue that ended too soon as Pike drew back with a too-quick bite to his lower lip.

‘Better?’ he breathed, glinting blue eyes pinning him down as effectively as his hands and hips. 

‘It’s a good start,’ he conceded, a touch breathlessly. Pike tilted his head with a speculative smile.

‘Only a start?’ Darting in quick, Pike bit at his swollen lower lip again, sharper and harder, worrying the flesh briefly before drawing up again. ‘And what are you going to do about that?’

McCoy shivered, biting down on his lip to renew the piercing ache of Pike’s teeth. ‘I don’t know,’ he hushed. ‘I can’t move.’

The flare of predatory heat that burned through Pike’s gaze vanished so quickly that McCoy wondered if he had imagined it, replaced as it was with an almost sheepish frown. ‘Right,’ he murmured, ‘sorry, here…’

Pike pushed upright, offering him a hand as he pulled them both up to their feet, much to McCoy’s secret irritation. ‘Sorry,’ he said again, more amused than ashamed now. ‘Got a bit overenthusiastic there.’

McCoy snorted at the understatement. To hear Pike explain it made it sound as though he had been jumped by an eager pup rather than a field-hardened Starfleet captain. ‘If you didn’t come here for a sparring lesson,’ he asked pointedly, ‘what does bring you here?’ Unless Jim had been taking advisory sessions in their quarters, this was the first time Pike had crossed his doorstep; suddenly, Jim’s absence seemed a blessing that gave this unusual visit a gloss of opportunity. His slighted libido twitched to life again at the thought, but Pike turned aside before he could act.

‘Well, it’s meant to be a surprise,’ he said evasively, gesturing to the ‘Fleet issued duffle on the bed, unzipped but packed with what looked suspiciously like items from McCoy’s wardrobe. He stared at it blankly.

‘Are we going somewhere?’

‘Just a couple days out of town,’ Pike said breezily. ‘Academy’s between terms, your exams are done and you should be taking advantage of the break for a change.’

McCoy sighed. Even a vague invitation to some unknown destination sounded heavenly, and yet… ‘I have clinic shifts this weekend.’

‘No, you don’t.’ A sympathetic frown creased Pike’s brow. ‘I’m so sorry about the untimely passing of your Aunt Mirabel.’

His own frown drew itself even deeper. ‘I don’t have an Aunt Mirabel.’

‘Not anymore, I know…’ Pike shook his head sadly. ‘So tragic.’

‘What the hell did you do?’

‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ he assured, eyes sparkling through his feigned sympathy. ‘Just approved your bereavement leave for the death of a fake relative who, by the way, is now a part of your permanent record.’ Pike frowned to himself. ‘I think she’s your mother’s sister, so you might want to keep that in mind in case anyone asks.’

McCoy barked a disbelieving laugh. ‘You’re worse than Jim,’ he admonished fondly.

‘Oh, I like to think so.’ Pride glinted harder through Pike’s amusement. ‘I was pulling stunts like this before he was born.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ McCoy smiled, ducked his head. This was a foolish idea, more impulsive and underhanded than he would have expected of his highly principled lover, to say nothing of himself. ‘Alright,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s do this.’

Pike’s entire demeanour warmed immediately before his eyes, releasing a tension that McCoy hadn’t fully realized was there until it was gone. ‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so glad you…’ He cleared his throat and stepped back. ‘My shuttlecar is parked outside,’ he explained shortly. ‘I’ll let you get changed. Meet me out there when you’re ready.’

‘You mean you don’t want to lend a hand with that?’ McCoy unzipped his red tunic and raised an inviting eyebrow, pleased at the conflicted arousal written plainly on Pike’s face. 

‘I’d… best not.’ He licked his lips, backing slowly towards the door. ‘I’m hoping we can get there while there’s still light, and that’s not likely to happen if I spend all day fucking you through your bunk.’

McCoy released a soft moan at the thought, recalling in a flood the number of times he had touched himself in that same bed while imagining Pike doing the very thing had just suggested. 

‘Fuck, don’t do that.’ Pike’s eyes narrowed at the involuntary sound, deadly with want. ‘Plenty of time for that later,’ he said, seemingly more to himself. ‘I’ll see you outside.’

With that parting remark, McCoy was left as alone as he had expected to be from the start but with every other familiarity slipping rapidly out of reach. He shrugged out of his uniform as he stared down at the bag Pike had packed for him. A change of clothes was already laid out next to it: jeans, t-shirt, a lightweight jacket, all culled from his limited wardrobe and somewhat the worse for wear as a result. The contrast between their worn cloth and his flawless uniform slammed home the confusion of what had just happened in the last few minutes and he hesitated in his undressing as the implication set in – how quickly he had turned the common pace of his life upside down at the pull of Pike’s smile. He bowed his head, his hands falling still at the threshold of clothing and skin.

‘Where the hell are you taking me, Chris?’ 

It was his first question when he joined Pike in his shuttle car, and one that went unanswered by anything but an eager grin as they sped away from campus. Pike’s shuttle car was sleek, low to the ground and profoundly comfortable, but even the seat molded like a caress along his back and thighs couldn’t keep him from squirming restlessly on the endless drive far beyond San Francisco’s dense quarters into the open skies of the desert.

A prickle of familiarity spiked along the road some forty minutes out as they sped inland, and he turned his head curiously as Pike flew past the turning that would have taken them to the site of their first excursion from the Academy. ‘Not that hotel again, then,’ he murmured.

‘Disappointed?’ Pike threw him a sidelong smirk. 

‘That depends on where we’re going instead,’ he drawled back. ‘I’ve got some pretty fond memories of that place now.’

‘I’m still not saying until we get there.’

‘Controlling bastard.’ McCoy slumped back in his seat, thumbing absently at his lower lip as he watched the desert fly past his window. They couldn’t be going very far from San Francisco if they were taking Pike’s ground shuttle instead of flying – that may have been a concession to his aviaphobia, if Pike hadn’t made that remark about getting to their destination before sundown. He shot a glance at the shuttle’s chronometer, then glared back out at the sun’s high place in the sky; not much clue there, really.

‘We’re close,’ Pike noted lightly. ‘If you were wondering.’

‘You and I might have different ideas of “close,” space boy,’ he remarked dryly, squinting as the landscape began to shift beyond the shuttlecar’s windows. As arid desert gave way to thriving trees and lush grass, he started to recognize the strangeness that marked the southwestern corner of the old Death Valley. The centuries-old name was hard to reconcile with the cherry blossoms and oaks that now sprung up around them like apparitions as they entered the terraformed parklands of Mojave.

They reduced speed as the desert disappeared completely, allowing McCoy a slower view of ranches and research facilities set apart by artificial glades. His curiosity mounted as they turned one curving road after another, each growing narrower and more secluded until a shaded driveway brought them to a stop alongside a barn overlooking a wide fenced paddock. The afternoon light caught the sleek black shape of a horse idly grazing beyond the fence; McCoy stared, transfixed as he silently followed Pike’s lead in climbing out of the shuttlecar.

‘You’ve missed them that much, haven’t you?’

McCoy blinked, tearing his gaze away from the vision of that black horse in the paddock to meet Pike’s amused smile. ‘Sorry?’

‘Horses. Riding.’ He tilted his head, beckoning McCoy to follow him up the gentle slope of the drive. As they strolled to slightly higher ground, he could see two more horses further out in the field, nosing through the taller grasses. ‘Why else do you think I brought you here?’

Though an involuntary grin was already spreading across his face, McCoy shook his head. ‘I don’t even know where we are,’ he pointed out with an exaggerated wave of his arm. ‘Well, besides Mojave, guessing by the fact it’s been terraformed within an inch of its life…’

‘That’s no way to talk about my home,’ Pike chided gently, freezing McCoy in his tracks with a surge of mortification and surprise.

‘Your home…?’ He stared around with a fresh wave of intense interest. Beyond the paddock and the stables, he could see a sprawling single-story house, cleanly modern with covered patios and large sparkling windows, all kept in immaculate condition.

He bit his lip with sudden trepidation. The house didn’t have the look of an officer’s holiday home kept under dust cloth for the better part of a year, and the horses likely didn’t take care of themselves either. ‘So,’ he said slowly, carefully, ‘you still have family here, or…’ He rubbed a sweating hand anxiously against his jeans, feeling downright grubby and unkempt.

‘No, it’s all mine now.’ Pike drew alongside him, rested a hand at the small of his back. ‘My mother shipped out to an agricultural settlement in the Alectryon system after my father died and she hasn’t been back much these last ten years.’ His fingers seemed to pick up the lingering tension at the base of his spine; he curled his hand around McCoy’s hip and gave him a playful sideways tug. ‘Don’t worry,’ he added lightly, ‘I’ll give you plenty of warning before I make that introduction.’

McCoy ducked his head, still embarrassed but oddly humbled by Pike’s reply. An introduction to the unknown Mrs. Pike was not something he had ever contemplated, though the harder he tried to picture such a person the more nervous he became at the idea. ‘Just looks well cared for is all,’ he mumbled.

‘Yeah, that’ll be down to Adam, I called ahead and had him get the house ready for us. In fact…’ Pike dropped his arm from McCoy’s waist and looked over his shoulder, ‘yes, there he is now.’

Following the backward direction of his gaze, McCoy squinted against the bright sun as a tall figure approached them on long, confident strides. As the new arrival drew nearer, stark sun and shadow gave way to a solidly built man, much closer to Pike’s age than his own. Sweat matted black hair streaked with grey to a tanned brow and dust streaked his work-worn trousers and shirt, but Pike didn’t hesitate to pull the man into a tight hug.

Much to McCoy’s grudging relief, they parted quickly enough, Pike drawing back with a bracing slap to a broad shoulder. ‘Good to see you again,’ he greeted, smiling broadly.

‘Was gonna say the same.’ The man beamed back. ‘Wondered when we’d be seeing you around these parts again.’

‘I know, it’s been too long.’ They hovered in a strangely silent welcome several beats longer before Pike seemingly recalled having brought McCoy along. ‘This is Adam,’ he said, glancing back at McCoy. ‘Lives down the road the next ranch over, he’s an old friend. And this is Leo,’ he finished, as though that were enough but Adam nodded knowingly as he cast a slow gaze over McCoy that made him strangely conscious of the scant centimetres of height advantage the other man had over him.

‘Dr. Leonard McCoy,’ he elaborated, taking Adam’s outstretched hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Likewise.’ Adam clasped his hand firmly, offered a warm enough smile though it slid sideways to Pike again with a suggestive twitch of a heavy eyebrow. ‘Chris has told me a lot about you.’

McCoy tried to repress a frown, likely failed. ‘Has he now?’

‘Hmmn.’ Moving smoothly on, he released McCoy’s hand and shoved his hair off his sweating brow. ‘Everything’s all set in the house,’ he said. ‘The horses were out most of the morning but they’re cooling off in the stables now. I guess you’ll want to go out right away.’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Pike threw a sidelong grin at McCoy, something mischievous lurking in his eye. ‘We’ll drop our bags in the house before I introduce Leo to the horses.’

‘Sounds like you have it all set, then… as usual.’ Adam gave McCoy another searching look from head to foot and back up again. ‘Let me know if you need help saddling up,’ he added with a wink.

‘Behave, Adam.’ The warning was delivered with a laugh, but the arm that wrapped around McCoy’s waist squeezed him tighter than usual. McCoy leaned into the half-embrace; Adam’s widening smile didn’t appear the least bit discouraged.

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ he shrugged cheerfully. ‘But I’ll let you two get on with it. How’s that for behaving?’ he asked with a wry eyebrow in Pike’s direction.

‘It’s a start,’ he murmured reproachfully, then added, even more quietly, ‘Thanks again, for all this.’

‘Happy to help, if it gets you back here more often.’ Adam’s smile softened into something more private and fond. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

McCoy caught the wistful flicker at the corner of Pike’s mouth. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll come around later, okay?’

‘I know you will.’ Adam caught McCoy’s eye. ‘Our Chris and his cigarettes,’ he said with a smirk.

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, though confusion curdled his gut and tightened his fingers around the back of Pike’s hand on his hip. He remembered that one time, outside the medical reception nearly a year ago when the sight of his Chris breathing smoke had stilled him in his tracks with equal parts lust and disgust but he had seen nothing of that behaviour since. Only they saw each other so seldom, really…

‘Nice to finally meet you, Leonard.’ Adam gave a lazy salute as he turned away, satisfied to let the exchange hang in awkward suspense. McCoy stared after him, brow furrowing as he noted the broad musculature beneath the clinging shirt, the tight fit of his pants over what was an admittedly flawless ass. 

‘C’mon.’ A slight tug at his hand snapped his attention away from Adam’s retreating backside. ‘Let’s get our bags in.’

With a low noise of assent, McCoy followed Pike the short distance back to the shuttlecar and silently slung his duffle over his shoulder when it was passed into his hands. He raised an eyebrow as Pike hoisted a much heavier-looking bag out of the car, but otherwise held his tongue as they ascended the drive again and walked towards the house.

‘You can ask, you know,’ Pike said lightly, breaking the monotonous scrape of gravel beneath their boots. 

‘Ask about what?’ He kept his eyes fixed to the house ahead, scanning beneath its low awnings for anything like an obvious front door.

‘Leo…’

The sigh in his voice scratched thinly across the surface of McCoy’s withdrawal, just deep enough to draw him out. ‘If you’re offering, I shouldn’t need to ask.’ Damned if he was going to make it any easier than that.

‘I grew up with Adam,’ Pike said, responding smoothly to his unspoken demand with an ease that immediately made McCoy feel foolish. ‘He’s always lived across the paddock from us. He’s easily my oldest friend.’

Their path took them beneath the shelter of a wide patio, up to a double door that McCoy had not seen from the drive. He scanned the windows to either side with open curiosity, heard the faint beeps of code responding beneath Pike’s unseen fingers before the doors swung smoothly open.

‘I’m sure you can tell how quiet it can be around here for a young boy,’ Pike continued, indifferent to the sprawling living room that stretched beyond the entrance hall. He turned to his left, passing into a wide hallway brightened by a series of narrow windows. ‘Adam and I had to invent our fun for the most part… though it mostly meant taking up residence with each others’ families,’ he added with a wistful smile. ‘Might’ve been easier if we’d been swapped at birth.’

‘How do you mean?’ Despite his reluctance, McCoy was fascinated now, trying to picture his Chris as a young boy growing up in Mojave, isolated from the busy urban society that had defined his own upbringing in Atlanta. A fleeting, unhelpful comparison to Jim’s childhood in Iowa sprung to mind and quickly evaporated as Pike glanced back at him.

‘Most families around here are either in agriculture or engineering,’ he explained. ‘Mine was all about horses. Adam’s folks were warp core engineers. His mother was in Starfleet and nothing fascinated me more than the idea of going into space, no matter how much my father wanted me to stay with the farm.’

Pike turned into the last doorway on the left; McCoy followed, his eyes widening at the large bed dominating what had to be the master bedroom. It stretched wide and inviting between four low bedposts, piled with pillows and draped in crisp linens that begged to be ruined. 

‘Adam, though… he loves horses, way more than the plasma coils his parents kept giving him for toys.’ McCoy snapped his gaze away from the bed, watching as Pike set his bag down by the double doors leading onto a shaded porch. ‘He’d sneak by here every chance he got. Eventually he struck a deal with my father to groom the horses in exchange for riding lessons. Worked out well, really,’ he added with a smile as he pulled aside the translucent grey drapes across the patio door. ‘Dad got to train up Adam to take over the running of the stables, and Adam’s mom helped me apply to Starfleet.’

‘Sounds like a fair trade.’ McCoy dropped his duffle on the floor and joined Pike by the doors. A separate path from the one they had taken from the drive crossed the lush grass to the stable beyond. ‘You almost make it sound like the two of you hardly saw each other,’ he added, arching a disbelieving eyebrow. Pike, thankfully, was unfazed by the cynical bite of his words.

‘Only almost,’ he allowed as the door slid open onto the garden walk. ‘It wasn’t all work out here, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ McCoy echoed dully. ‘I’d have guessed more play than work.’

Pike slipped past him and out the door with a suggestive drag of his hand across McCoy’s hip and a too-knowing glance. ‘If you’re done speculating rather than asking,’ he murmured, ‘we can see about some playtime of our own.’

Though uneasy, curiosity and a small measure of regret sent McCoy trailing in his wake. ‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted out as they descended the gentle slope beyond the house. ‘It’s not my business…’

‘Of course it’s your business.’ Pike turned on his heel and waited for McCoy to catch up before walking on, keeping him close with a light hand at the small of his back. ‘You’re my lover,’ he said simply, ignorant of the pleasure sparked in McCoy’s belly at the unadorned declaration. ‘You shouldn’t be afraid to ask about where I come from.’

‘Think you’ve already shown me that.’ The scented air and the closeness of Pike’s body were already easing his anxieties; he dared to slip a hand over Pike’s shoulder as they crested the hill. ‘And it’s beautiful,’ he added. Artificiality certainly didn’t make Mojave less attractive; it was engineered to beauty down to the last blade of grass beneath their boots.

‘You haven’t seen the best of it yet.’ The downhill slope to the stable quickened their step, but there was an added spring of eagerness to Pike’s gait as they drew nearer, fast enough to pull them temporarily apart. Eyebrows raised, McCoy followed Pike into the stable, trailing close as he approached a short line of stalls where faint snorts and the whisk of tails beckoned.

‘This is Tango,’ Pike introduced warmly, indicating the first of two adjacent horses, mahogany-warm bays both. Tango was as strong and lean as his owner, blaze marking bright in the dim stable. ‘And Foxtrot is here.’ McCoy’s eye slid to the second bay, taking a first appreciative look at what he took to be his own mount for this little excursion, but a flicker of a brighter coat caught the corner of his eye. He turned his head, and gasped, nearly choking on the leap of his heart into his throat.

As though sensing his startled stare, the palomino in the furthest stall lifted its head with an indifferent but utterly unmistakable whiff of pride that propelled the wild hope growing too large in his chest. The weight of the possibility dragged heavily upon him, held him back: this couldn’t be his Tara, and he knew the moment he drew close enough to make sure, the horrible ache of that first loss would cripple him all over again. With no small effort, he turned away from the horse to face Pike, who was watching him with the beginning of a smile lurking on his lips. 

‘Chris…?’ 

‘Well, I had hoped the reveal would be better executed than this, but…’ He sighed, waved a hand. ‘Forget it. You’d best go say hello before she stomps a hole through the ground.’

McCoy spun back around; sure enough, Tara was fussing in her stall and snorting lightly with that familiar toss of her head that dispelled any lingering doubts in his mind. He rushed forward, flung open the stall door and released a shuddering breath he didn’t realize he was holding as the palm of his hand stroked the warm velvet strength of a golden neck that bowed in sudden calm to meet him.

‘Tara…’ He repeated it nonsensically, eyes falling closed as he inhaled her familiar scent, heart nearly breaking at the nudge of her muzzle into his shoulder. She shifted restlessly, snuffling at him in futile search of her apple and in that moment he would have felled a whole tree of the things to keep her. ‘Easy, girl,’ he murmured, stroking her brow until she settled with an annoyed huff that brought a broad grin to his lips. ‘Yes… there’s my girl…’

‘Should’ve known.’ Pike’s murmur drifted to McCoy’s distracted ear. ‘Adam figured there was no getting through to her but I suspected that had more to do with the owner than the horse.’ 

‘You would,’ he snorted. McCoy turned around, one hand still warming itself against Tara’s body as he glanced back at Pike. His lover hung back, somehow looking more anxious than pleased. ‘What?’ he asked, concern swiftly stifling his stunned delight.

Pike shook his head with a self-deprecating twist of a smirk. ‘Nothing, I just…’ He blew out a frustrated breath. ‘Last time I went with the grand romantic gesture, it kind of blew up in my face.’

‘There’s a world of difference between a suit and my Tara,’ he said dismissively, gazing reverently back up at his girl. For Pike to have gone to such an effort, to have tracked her down and travelled all the way to…

The implication hit him hard, knocked the breath from his chest for the second time in minutes. As though sensing his shift in mood, Tara bumped his shoulder, so gentle but it nearly knocked his suddenly weak legs from under him. 

‘So you’ve met Joss.’ 

‘Joss…? Oh.’ A low sigh filled the silence of Pike’s realization. ‘Your ex-wife, you mean.’ A pause, a brisk intake of breath. ‘Yeah, she still had Tara but like you said, she was more than happy to sell.’

There was a forced breeziness in Pike’s tone that drew him away from the comfort of Tara’s soft muzzle and out of the stall, his anxious frown deepening as he took in the unpleasant twist at the corner of his lover’s mouth. ‘And how did that go?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Great,’ he replied swiftly, cockily. ‘I got Tara for a song.’ 

‘Chris…’

Pike crossed his arms across his chest, stared flatly back at McCoy for a time too long for him not to feel the weight of some unspoken judgment charging the air between them. Then Pike dropped his head to his chest, and the tension was gone, too fleeting to read or understand. 

‘I didn’t let on that I know you, if that’s what you’re asking,’ he said. ‘Just a hunch, but I didn’t think I’d have much luck buying Tara if she knew I was going to give her right back to the ex-husband.’

‘Good hunch,’ McCoy acknowledged dryly. ‘But that wasn’t really what I meant.’

‘No, of course it’s not.’ Pike lifted his chin, eyes flat and jaw set. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he admitted. ‘Stunning, really. And a hell of a lot more charming than I was expecting. You two must have made a very striking couple.’

‘Wasn’t much basis for a marriage,’ McCoy muttered. He already regretted asking the question when the silences between each reluctant answer were so heavy, so unhappy. ‘And there was nothing pretty about how it ended.’

‘Good.’ At McCoy’s startled eyebrow, Pike cringed and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t mean…’ He dragged a hand over his mouth and turned away. ‘Shit, sorry.’

‘No…’ McCoy took several wary steps after him. ‘What did you mean?’ he urged, as gently as he could.

‘Would you ever…’ Pike cut off his own words with an ugly grimace. ‘If you could go back to that life, go back to…’

‘No.’ McCoy stared disbelievingly. He could scarcely recognize the uncertainty playing out before him in averted eyes and incomplete words. ‘No, I wouldn’t. Damn it, I _couldn’t_ , not now.’

‘Right.’ Pike nodded, but was otherwise unmoved. ‘Of course, if–’

‘Especially not now I have you.’ Quickened by understanding, McCoy closed the short distance between them and slipped his hand alongside Pike’s downturned jaw. ‘It’s not just Starfleet,’ he insisted quietly. ‘It’s not just having nowhere else to go. Not anymore.’ 

Maybe it had needed saying a lot sooner than this. McCoy coaxed his face upward and brushed his lips over the angular planes of Pike’s face, lightly kissing brow and cheekbone before claiming his mouth. Pike parted his lips with a soft groan, tangling his fingers into McCoy’s hair and tilting his head to welcome him deeper, drowning them both until the need for air made them break gaspingly apart.

‘Thank you,’ McCoy hushed breathlessly. Both his hands still gently cradled Pike’s face, fingers blindly reverent over every contour. ‘I… I can’t thank you enough…’

‘There’s no need…’ Pike covered his hands with his own, pressed a kiss to his fingers before gently lowering them. ‘She was always yours,’ he murmured. ‘I just wanted to bring her back to you. If I could, I’d…’

His voice trailed off, eyelids shuttering blue eyes that had been so transparent moments before as he stared down at their joined hands. McCoy followed his gaze, stunned by the tender trace of Pike’s thumb over his knuckles. ‘You’d what?’ he asked, cautiously quiet.

Pike’s grip tightened, quick and sharp as a convulsion but his smile as he drew back was kind, if distant. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘It’s still early enough for a ride if we get going now instead of listening to me make a damn fool of myself.’

Setting his uneasiness aside, McCoy summoned up an answering smile; the evasion was obvious, but damned if he was going to repay Pike’s generosity by pushing the point. ‘I can’t imagine you ever looking foolish,’ he said fondly. ‘Unless you’ve been lying about your prowess on horseback all this time and this is you trying to put off the embarrassment of getting caught out…’

A brighter grin washed the last shadow from Pike’s eyes. ‘Hardly,’ he scoffed. ‘I’ve been riding before I could walk.’

McCoy smirked as he hooked his fingers behind Pike’s belt and tugged him close. ‘Then prove it,’ he dared softly.

\+ + +

The sky smoldered as swift as their horses as they rode back to the stable two hours later, burning from gold to crimson before darkening to velvet violet as they finally dismounted and walked Tango and Tara inside. McCoy cast an appreciative glance over his shoulder as Pike entered ahead of him, taking in the expansive sky with a gruff sigh.

Figured this engineered paradise would also give them a spectacular sunset to ride through at the end of the day.

McCoy took in a lingering look at Pike bending to unfasten Tango’s saddle as he walked Tara closer to her own stall. He stifled a useless pang of regret as he recalled the soft grass in the clearing where they had dismounted for a rest, the scented heat of the air that had made Pike’s shirt cling distractingly to his skin. 

Biting down on his lower lip, McCoy focused as best he could on Tara’s needs rather than his own, tending to her saddle and bridle as familiarly as though he hadn’t gone years without this pleasure. His hands remembered every task, leaving his mind too free to wander back to that clearing. They had been too long apart up until today to not indulge while the horses grazed, starting with idle touches and deft kisses that lingered and deepened as they abandoned any pretense of conversation and tumbled to the ground.

Even when long deprived of each other, they had moved without urgency, slipping hands beneath clothing and stretching languidly across the grass with legs tangling loosely together. McCoy had savoured every patient caress of Pike’s hand beneath his shirt, the lightest brush of lips along his neck. He had tipped his head back, released a moan that should have embarrassed him as Pike rolled on top of him and tugged at his hair and…

And nothing more, nothing beyond more kisses and flattering murmurs, no matter how swiftly his imagination was already enlarging that moment to perverse dimensions. McCoy stared down at the tangle of Tara’s bridle in his hands, thumbing over the leather straps as a bone-deep shudder of arousal quaked down his spine. Maybe, if he had asked, if he had moved, if he had done _anything_ but lie in helpless paralysis beneath the tantalizing weight of Pike’s body, drowning in the same intoxicating scent of sweat and aftershave that drifted past him now. Stiffening to attention, McCoy hastily flung Tara’s bridle and reins over the stall’s edge and turned as Pike walked past, hanging the last of Tango’s tack on the wall nearby.

‘She’s even more beautiful than you described,’ Pike said as he paused by Tara’s stall. ‘You make a great team.’

‘That’s all down to her,’ he insisted gruffly, any and all pride reserved for his Tara. ‘And you, for bringing her here.’ He turned into her warm flank again, breathing the heat and power of the horse’s body as he fought to untangle need from gratitude. Even with any lingering sense of obligation stripped away, his insides still seethed with the adrenaline of the ride, responding to the heated sweep of Pike’s eyes over his body, the primal scents of animal and leather that had always driven him to distraction back before he had known a safe harbour in which to drown in these urges.

‘I can’t thank you enough for this.’ His mind was set, even if his heart raced anxiously as he dragged down the reins from the edge of the stall. ‘I‘d like to give you something in return. If you’ll have it.’

‘That’s really not necessary.’ Pike’s smile faded slightly. ‘I’ve already…’

‘I know.’ McCoy cut him off shortly, determination tight in his throat. ‘It’s nothing to do with being obliged to repay you. I just… hell, this might be me asking too much.’

Pike raised an eyebrow. ‘So are you giving, or asking?’

Wordlessly, McCoy closed the space between them, his riding boots echoing off the stable floor, fiddling with the reins in his hands. He offered the leather length to Pike, who accepted with a question burning in his eyes that flared hotter still when he found a loop tangled around McCoy’s wrist. Testing silently, he tugged his handful of straps and sucked in a sharp breath when the loop drew tighter and pulled McCoy’s bound hand closer.

‘Leo…?’

McCoy bowed his head, tipped up Pike’s jaw with the fingertips of his free hand and pressed a slow, smoldering kiss to his lips. ‘You always used to say you wanted to tame me,’ he said in a low hush, mouths still close enough to brush lightly. ‘I think it’s time you tried it.’

The leather reins around his wrist chafed harder when Pike’s grip tightened, showing a strength belied by the hard tremor that made Pike lean into him, as though he needed the stability of McCoy’s body to stay upright against the onslaught of his arousal. ‘Are you sure?’ His next breath was slower, shakier. ‘I… don’t want to hurt you, Leo, some of the things I…’

‘I trust you, Chris.’ He drew back so Pike could look him in the eye and see the sincerity he hoped would be clear there. ‘You won’t break me,’ he promised gently. ‘So don’t let that stop you from trying.’

This time, when McCoy leaned in for another kiss, Pike met him halfway with a low groan that rushed along the eager tongue swiftly parting his willing lips and claiming him from the inside out. Fingers shoved into his hair and tugged his head hard to the side, forcing him to bend into the demand of Pike’s kiss, to open himself wider beneath the teeth that caught his lower lip and ripped a longing sound from deep in McCoy’s throat.

‘Not so different from our first kiss, is this?’ Pike hushed against his mouth, making McCoy shiver in remembrance of that night behind Dufresne’s, of the bruises Pike had left behind to haunt him for days, weeks after. ‘I should’ve known, back then…’ He yanked at McCoy’s hair again, baring his throat to a slow, predatory scrape of teeth along his jugular that made his knees weaken beneath him. Panting hard, he reached for a handhold on Pike’s body and groaned softly when his left hand snapped short at the end of the reins in Pike’s clenched fist.

‘Fighting back already?’ With a parting bite to McCoy’s collarbone, Pike released his hair but kept a firm hold on the reins binding his wrist as he circled tight around him, pressing up against his back with an arm slung low around his hips to pull him into the slow grind of his erection through the combined layers of their clothing. 

‘You haven’t done anything worth fighting yet,’ McCoy snapped back. His free hand groped backward and closed around Pike’s hip, urging him on and moaning eagerly as Pike growled into his ear and thrust harder against him.

‘Just you wait,’ he hissed. Pike shoved him none too gently, and McCoy exhaled sharply as he slammed into the nearest partition wall, setting the hanging bridles and bits rattling around him on their hooks. Cheek pressed hard to the aged wood, he strained and failed to catch a glimpse of Pike as he crowded in close, pulled his arms behind his back and swiftly passed the reins around both wrists. His breath caught in his throat as Pike tugged at the final knot he cast, eyes falling shut as his cock throbbed impossibly harder, a fact that didn’t escape Pike’s sweeping gaze as he spun him back around to face him.

‘You’re so hard for me already.’ Pike’s heated gaze studied him closely as he fondled the firm ridge of his cock pressing through denim. ‘How long have you wanted me to do this?’

He shoved in for another kiss, sparing McCoy the embarrassment of answering with anything other than a muffled groan. It didn’t matter if he had wanted this since last week or from ten minutes after Pike left him wrung dry and aching beneath that willow tree nearly a year ago; all that mattered was the ferocity of Pike’s mouth claiming his own, Pike’s hands shoving under his shirt and dragging blunt fingernails across his hungry skin.

‘You’ll need a safeword,’ Pike said, drawing back. His breathing was uneven, his face flushed but his eyes were piercingly focused. ‘If we’re going to do this…’

McCoy bit his lip, searching aimlessly around the dusky stall until a flash of pale mane caught his attention. ‘Palomino,’ he decided swiftly, indifferently. ‘I’ll snap my fingers three times if I can’t speak.’

Pike froze, then stared. ‘If you can’t speak…’

‘You know…’ He shrugged, trying to pretend a lack of preference either way. ‘If you wanted to gag me, or…’

‘You’ve done this before.’ Those blue eyes narrowed suspiciously, but Pike also pressed in closer, sliding so tight that he could feel the full length of his cock imprinting its heat against his thigh.

‘Only a couple times,’ he admitted, squirming into the dual pressure of the wall at his back and Pike’s hard body pinning him down. ‘And a very long time ago.’ As far back as Ole Miss and a boy too casual to have earned this much trust, back when he had been too horny and overworked to be particular in his partners. None of that rough play had ever ventured into territory dangerous enough to snap his way out, but Sean had loved nothing more than to stop up his sarcastic mouth, whether with his hand or an improvised gag or his cock. ‘Does that bother you?’ he asked as the silence stretched on, Pike staring into him like a puzzle to be smashed apart.

‘No,’ he said, decisive and final. ‘I know you had a life before this,’ he added, leaning in for a slowly lush kiss. ‘You don’t need to hide it from me.’

McCoy strained forward, chasing after Pike’s mouth and lapping gently at the hint of a frown turning his lower lip. ‘I know, darling…’ He dared a sharp flick of teeth, grinned as Pike growled and tightened his hold. 

‘I should fuck your past right out of you,’ he muttered, breath hot against his lips. ‘Fuck you so hard you can’t help but scream every dirty detail of every person who’s ever touched you.’

An anxious flutter burst through McCoy’s chest at the fervent note beneath the threat, one he covered with a hard smirk. ‘I’d like to see you try.’

Pressed so close, he felt the shudder that passed through Pike’s body, a shivering riptide of tension that gathered itself into the hands that dragged down from his chest to the waist of his jeans. McCoy groaned softly as fingers shoved between tight cloth and skin, melting with anticipation that snapped itself short as Pike yanked him away from the wall and spun him hard to the left. A vacant stall door cracked open beneath the kick of Pike’s boot, revealing a chaos of straw and stray horse blankets that flew fast into focus when Pike forcibly threw him inside. 

All the air in his lungs was slammed out of his body as McCoy hit the ground. With his arms bound behind him, there was no breaking his fall as knee, hip, shoulder all impacted the hard floor beneath an old scattering of straw. He gasped for air that reeked of bestial musk, fumbling for sense as Pike knelt over his prone body. His thighs hemmed him in to either side, held him down as ruthlessly as the eyes that gleamed hotly down at him as fingers wrenched at his belt buckle. McCoy bit back a whimper, his hips flexing to ease the belt’s way as Pike yanked it free with a hard snap of his wrist.

‘Over,’ he growled, but Pike was already shoving his body into obedience, pushing at his hips and tugging his jeans down his thighs in a frantic fumble of movement. McCoy struggled to keep up despite his bound hands, and cried out when the belt cracked across his bared ass. 

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ he gasped. The shock of the blow had already dissolved as quick as it had come, leaving behind a paralyzing heat that throbbed hard through his dick. 

‘That’s the general idea.’ Pike’s voice was tight, rasping between heavy breaths as he forced McCoy facedown in the blankets. The scratchy wool and prickling straw was nearly torturous against his cock, making McCoy squirm for relief, nearly mindless of the belt sliding between his arms and his back. The leather chafed above and below his elbows, tightened in two loops that buckled his arms impossibly close behind his back. 

A fist tangled into the belt, gave it a sharp tug that, together with the strong arm flung under his chest, pulled him upright onto his knees with Pike pressed to his back again. He dragged the hem of McCoy’s t-shirt up his chest and back over his head, blinding McCoy briefly until his head emerged from its collar. With his arms tightly bound, Pike seemed satisfied leaving his shirt clinging to his shoulders and back as he greedily explored McCoy’s bared chest. He sucked in a startled gasp as Pike tugged sharply at his nipples, shooting unexpected sparks of arousal straight to his cock, which throbbed eagerly as his other hand crept lower down his clenching stomach. The slightest brush of Pike’s thumb over the crown had him panting heavily, head falling helplessly back on Pike’s shoulder.

‘You’re so turned on, aren’t you…’ The rasping hush of Pike’s voice, the flick of a tongue at his ear tore a moan from between his heaving breaths. ‘I bet I could make you come in three seconds if I wanted to…’

McCoy moaned in frustration as Pike released his cock, stopped touching him entirely. ‘What, don’t want to prove it?’ he snapped.

‘Don’t want you getting off that easy.’ McCoy’s sensitized skin felt the faintest brush of movement against his ass, heard the rustle of Pike’s jeans being shoved down. ‘I want to take you just like this… all hard and desperate…’

Pike seized him by the belt binding his arms again, keeping a possessive hold on him but otherwise denying him any other contact. A faint wet sound carried to McCoy’s ears, followed by an unmistakable rhythm that slammed the image Pike’s hand stroking his own cock into his mind, a shiver-inducing thought that broke with the glide of those same elegant fingers trailing down the cleft of his ass towards his waiting hole.

‘Can’t believe you had lube on you,’ he huffed, voice catching in his throat as Pike slid two fingers into him in a single uncompromising shove.

‘I haven’t seen you in _weeks_.’ A rough groan escaped Pike’s throat, brushing against McCoy’s neck as he urgently finger fucked him open. ‘I’ve been waiting so long for this, you have no idea…’

His fingers withdrew before McCoy had fully relaxed around them, leaving a hollow ache that was soon filled by the slow stretch of Pike’s cock splitting him wider, one short thrust at a time. The hasty preparation had kept him tight, left him shuddering and gasping as Pike snapped his hips hard until he was buried to the hilt. 

‘Show me, then,’ he challenged, hands twisting impatiently against the reins binding his wrists as Pike went still against his back. ‘Damn it, Chris, _show me._ ’

With a low growl, Pike pulled his hair, forcing his head back and sideways into the thrust of his tongue, obscene and wet past his gaping lips in time with the drive of his cock riding him deeply, lethally slow. Far too slow for the racing of McCoy’s blood in his veins; he strained into Pike’s mouth, caught his lower lip with his teeth and shoved his hips back, daring him to speed the hell up, to take him harder. 

Pike wrenched back from the bite with a grunt and a shove that sent him toppling forward, nearly planting his face into the filthy straw if not for Pike catching him again: one hand clamped around his hip, the other using the belt to hold him suspended, helplessly impaled on Pike’s cock.

‘Mouthy little bitch…’ Pike released his hip just long enough to land a stinging smack to his ass before tightening his hold and yanking him back hard onto his cock. Shoulders straining, breath knocked from his lungs, McCoy gasped noiselessly as that cruel thrust slammed into his prostate, slid away, hit him again, harder, faster that he could count. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, only hang slack and let Pike ride him like a mute beast, using the belt binding his arms as effectively as any harness to control what little movement he had.

 _Fuck,_ it was perfect.

‘Not… complaining now, are you?’ Pike’s voice was harsh yet uneven, panting as his thrusts grew more erratic. ‘Is this what you wanted… wanted me to take you down, use you hard…’ He leaned his weight onto McCoy’s bound arms, forcing him down into the musty straw and blankets. ‘You dirty slut…’

He slapped his ass again, wresting a muffled shout from McCoy’s parched throat as Pike seized his hips with both hands and fucked him with longer, deeper strokes that punched mercilessly at his prostate. Once that cry was forced out of him, there was no stopping the raw, keening sounds pouring past his aching lips as he squirmed into harsh musk of the stall floor, his entire body inflamed to the point that even the scratch of straw against his bare skin was destroying his mind. 

Pike slapped him again, held him painfully still as he groaned loudly into orgasm, a flood that swallowed McCoy as his cock spasmed with a will of its own, spattering his chest and belly with come even as Pike filled him hotly from the inside. Dizzy relief exhaled out him with a weak moan and made him sag beneath the weight of Pike’s body as he slumped over his back, chest heaving and heart thumping fast against his bound arms.

‘Fuck…’ Hot, damp breath glanced over McCoy’s shoulder, followed by a hasty smudge of a kiss. ‘Fuck… sorry, I didn’t mean to… here…’

Fingertips eased themselves from the permanent imprints they had gouged in McCoy’s hip and tripped around his thigh, fumbling towards his already softening dick. McCoy bit back a whimper of discomfort as Pike’s hand found his tender length and fondled it incredulously.

‘Did you…?’

‘Yeah.’ He sighed raggedly as Pike slid carefully out of him and tried to balance his unsteady body as he slumped sideways onto the ground. ‘Ow,’ he murmured indifferently, stretching his legs as best he could in his tangled jeans as Pike chuckled softly and tugged the buckle loose on the belt. A flutter of loss rode the rush of blood that tingled back through his arms as Pike released his elbows and went to work plucking the knots at his wrists.

‘Stop squirming,’ he said softly. 

‘Yes, sir.’ He replied lazily, but couldn’t fail to notice Pike freezing with a swiftly indrawn breath before shuddering loose and returning his attention to the knotted reins. McCoy bit his lip, lying obediently still until Pike freed his hands and eased him onto his back, curling alongside him in the straw with a furrow between his brows.

‘I didn’t even touch you,’ Pike murmured, shaking his head as he skimmed his fingers through the spatters of come on his chest. 

McCoy raised a stern eyebrow. ‘I have bruises and a pain in my ass that would disagree with you,’ he drawled back, enjoying the flush that deepened across Pike’s face before he grinned bashfully.

‘You’re impossible,’ he sighed, leaning up to kiss him chastely. ‘And too beautiful for words,’ he added in a hush as McCoy slipped his tongue along Pike’s lower lip and circled an arm around his waist, drawing him closer until his Chris lay draped over his sticky and well-used body, a solid weight upon his heart.

‘You sure you’re alright?’ The question drifted on a long silence in which McCoy idly watched the colour of dusk darken between the slats of the barn walls and fingered the sweat-damp curls at the nape of Pike’s neck. He smiled, closing his eyes to concentrate on his other senses, drawing inward from the closeness of Pike’s body to the dull throb of his bruises to the languid ease of muscles and calming blood beneath.

‘Never better.’


	3. Chapter 3

By the time they stumbled out of the stable with a last farewell to the horses, full night had fallen over Mojave. Only Pike’s hand clasping his own kept him from losing his way in the dark towards the faint glow of the ranch house where the kitchen was well stocked with prepared foods that saved them the trouble of cooking this late in the evening. Instead, they sat at the sturdy wooden table with a variety of salads, cheeses, and cured meats spread out between them, casually shared by fingers and forks without worrying over plates as they bantered through light, teasing topics that sketched a wide margin around their most recent activities with an innocence that prickled beneath McCoy’s itching skin.

Chewing absently, he followed the movements of Pike’s hand as it wielded the cheese knife, plucked grape-like things the colour of pomegranate from a bowl, raised a bottled beer to his lips with a grip that was all strong fingertips. If he moved just so in his chair, he could feel the rough fabric of his jeans rub the bruises those fingers had gouged into his hips to such an indelible depth. Even that violent hold had been so measured and precise, containing only a fraction of the strength he could read in Pike’s bared forearms. 

Pike looked up suddenly and McCoy hastily glanced down at their shared buffet to hide the flush he could feel crawling up his neck. He knew how intense his stare must have been, far too heated to go unnoticed.

‘Alright?’ Pike asked softly. 

‘Yeah,’ he said quickly, every bit as quiet. He reached half-heartedly for his abandoned fork, let it drop back to the table. ‘That was delicious,’ he added, forcing a polite smile that Pike met with a dubious tilt of his head.

‘Are you done already?’

‘Guess I’m not that hungry.’ That was one explanation anyway; McCoy doubted he could swallow another bite around the suffocating weight of unvoiced urges stuck in his throat. ‘Mind if I grab a quick shower?’ It was the first thing to break clear of a confusion of impulses that made him want to escape the overwhelming pull of Pike’s presence and throw himself across the table like a sacrifice at the same time. The latter idea made his flush deepen with embarrassment and there weren’t many places to hide within the territory of Pike’s home. ‘Feeling kinda sweaty and sore from the ride today.’

Much to McCoy’s relief, the skepticism in Pike’s face melted into a slow smirk. ‘Which ride are we talking about?’ 

Teasingly unspoken though it was, it was the first mention Pike had made of the events in the stable since they had returned to the house. A hard shiver raced down his spine and settled hot between his legs as he met Pike’s eyes across the table. ‘Both,’ he murmured, hoping to match Pike’s effortless eroticism but unable to repress a recklessly giddy grin. ‘Well, maybe more the second than the first.’

‘Not too sore, I hope?’

 _Not nearly enough._ It drifted across his mind too swiftly for speech, and nowhere near slow enough to prevent a deeper flush from warming his face. ‘Hardly,’ he drawled as he nudged his chair back from the table. ‘You haven’t done nothing a bit of hot water won’t put right.’

A hard glint sharpened Pike’s eye, a stare that held firm as he deftly cracked open some nameless Vulcan fruit between his hands. ‘Shower’s down the hall,’ he said, blithely indifferent as he plunged his fingers after the slippery seeds inside the thick shell. ‘Third door on the right, plenty of towels in the linen closet.’

True to Pike’s directions, McCoy found a large and luxurious bathroom behind the door indicated, including a tall cupboard stocked with thick white towels that flung the image of Adam’s hands smoothing every fold into his mind before he gave his head a shake and grabbed one carelessly from the top of the pile. His clothes left a far more unsightly mess on the immaculate floor as he hastily stripped and set the water running viciously hot in the shower.

The dark-tiled shower stall was generously proportioned but McCoy huddled close under the large primary showerhead, forearm braced to wall and brow pressed to forearm as he let the water soak his skin. Steam billowed through the moist air and throbbed soothingly into the ache that lingered inside his thighs. Knowing full well that his quadriceps were protesting their first time on horseback in ages didn’t help strip the soreness of an erotic charge that wove itself into the fingerprint bruises on his hips, the faint welts around his wrists. He spread his thighs wider apart to stretch the tight muscles and groaned softly as water cascaded over him even more intimately than before. 

His free hand slid down the tensed plane of his belly and curled loosely around his cock. He didn’t dare to give himself more than that, not when his mind was thickly flooded with images and ideas that made him want to sink to his knees even in the absence of Pike’s commanding voice and touch. Even this cautious caress was too much, too close. 

Reluctantly, he withdrew his hand and reached for the shower gel instead, scrubbing himself as impersonally as he could manage. His jaw clenched stubbornly whenever his soapy fingers slid over his nipples, the faint stripe of bruising rising below his elbow, down between his buttocks…

He emerged from the shower half-hard, a vast improvement that he fought to maintain as he briskly dried himself off. Knotting his towel ruthlessly around his waist, McCoy turned towards the wide mirror over the sink, wiping away a stripe of condensation and pausing as his eye caught the thin red welt on his wrist. 

Slowly, he drew his hand back, traced the mark lightly with the edge of his thumb. It barely stretched halfway around his wrist, and only cut deep enough to twinge for a few precious centimetres that he revisited back and forth until the answering throb beneath his towel made him leave off with a growl and plant both hands on the edge of the sink. He glared into his smeared reflection in the mirror, willing his heart to slow to something like sanity.

‘Damn it.’ He had to settle down before he went back out there. His Chris had already given him an incredible thing, something he had barely mustered the guts to ask for in the first place. That should be more than enough. 

With a firm nod to himself in the mirror, McCoy kept a secure grip on his towel as he crossed the room. Best thing he could do now was duck across the hallway to the bedroom, find a fresh change of clothes, and offer to help Pike tidy up in the kitchen like a gracious guest. 

The plan made perfect sense, at least until McCoy opened the bathroom door, stared around in confusion at the drastically dimmed lighting and was paralyzed by Pike’s hard gaze snaring him from the other end of the hall.

‘Chris?’ He visually raked the other man in the half-light of the bedroom’s open door; Pike had removed his shirt, and McCoy’s jaw sagged slightly to see how the shadows sculpted his toned abdominal muscles and strong arms. 

‘Leo.’ Pike pushed away from the doorway and approached him with slow, loping footsteps that kept McCoy frozen in place as though facing down a feral cat. Something dangled from his hand, swung against his thigh with a delicate rattle. ‘Good shower?’

‘Sure,’ he agreed hoarsely, eyes fixed on the object in Pike’s hand. The misshapen shaft of light from the bathroom fell upon it, glinting off a short length of heavy chain links.

‘It took you long enough,’ Pike remarked, scolding just enough to make McCoy twitch under his towel. ‘But at least it gave me time to prepare.’

‘Prepare for…?’ Staring intently, he finally discerned a pair of wide leather cuffs linked to the chain, each glinting with a heavy buckle. He was still transfixed by the cuffs as Pike crowded in close and drew his fingertips feather-light along his jaw, tracing down to his throat.

‘For you.’ His thumb followed the tight bob of his Adam’s apple, applied the slightest dizzying pressure to the base of his throat. ‘Even if you did spoil it somewhat.’ Pike smirked darkly and tightened his grasp on McCoy’s throat, shoving hard enough to pin him to the doorjamb. He gasped shakily, eyes wide, but kept his hands slack and willing at his sides.

‘It’s not like I haven’t noticed,’ he murmured silkily, pressing close enough to brush McCoy’s stirring erection through the towel with his thigh. ‘I’ve had you for almost a year now, long enough to know what you really want even if you’ve never had the balls to say it out loud… well, until this afternoon of all times.’

‘I didn’t mean to–’ McCoy sucked in a startled breath as Pike’s other hand crept under his towel and settled on his thigh; the chain of the cuffs seared cold against his skin. 

‘You meant every damn bit of it, you gorgeous, dirty thing.’ Pike squeezed his throat tighter, leaning in with the lightest brush of lips, too faint and distant for a kiss. ‘And just as well, given what I have in store for you.’

McCoy swallowed tightly past the pressure of Pike’s hand around his neck. ‘And what would that be…?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ In a single brisk move, Pike snatched his towel aside and fondled his stiff cock. ‘This tells me you know exactly what I have in mind,’ he murmured, ‘and it tells me that you want it.’

‘Yes,’ McCoy gasped, completely lost. The brush of that chain against his balls, the hot rush of Pike’s breath against his lips burned his will to ashes. ‘Yes, fuck, I want it…’

‘I know.’ Despite his smug tone, Pike rewarded him with a slow, searing kiss that tangled with his greedy tongue for an indulgent moment before pulling back. ‘Now,’ he said, a hint of steel in his voice, ‘give me your hands.’

He raised the right first, gratified that his surgical self-control kept his hand from shaking as Pike fastened the leather cuff to a snug fit around his wrist. Pike grabbed his left hand rather than wait for McCoy to offer it and soon had his wrists chained together and pinned to the wall above his head. McCoy moaned at the friction of taut muscle and rough denim against his skin as Pike leaned into him with the full length of his body, writhing in restless anticipation as Pike tilted his head into his neck and audibly inhaled his scent.

‘You smell like my soap,’ Pike murmured, pausing to lick at that spot behind his ear that always made him shiver. ‘You smell like you’re _mine._ ’

‘I am, darling.’ He desperately flexed his hips, rubbing feverishly against Pike’s leg. ‘But if you really want to prove it…’

Pike growled against his throat, teeth sinking into the thin skin along his carotid artery. ‘I will,’ he promised darkly. ‘Come on.’

He tugged ruthlessly at the cuffs, McCoy stumbling eagerly in his wake as they flew into the bedroom. The perfect bedcovers were already peeled back, and McCoy’s eyes widened at the fleeting glimpse of narrow chains trailing from the headboard before Pike threw him down to the mattress. The air fled his lungs in a rough exhale, and breath proved hard to come by once Pike slid on top of him, pressed as close as he could with McCoy’s bound hands trapped between them, and curled a hand around his throat, forcing his gaze. McCoy swallowed tightly as Pike’s knee nudged between his naked thighs and parted him wider.

‘Once I’m done with you,’ he murmured silkily, his lips a whisper against his jaw, his lips, ‘you’ll _know_ that you’re mine.’ His hand forced McCoy’s head back, baring his throat to a slow, heated drag of teeth and tongue that flayed him open with a raw shiver of need. ‘Up here… _come on_ …’

McCoy followed the pull of the cuffs above his head as Pike dragged him along, moving willingly beneath the direction of Pike’s hands as he chained him to the bed, wrists above his head and thighs anchored to the upper posts of the headboard by wide leather straps buckled to each thigh. He watched from under heavy eyelids, intoxicated by Pike’s commanding presence washing over his skin as lay himself in between his bound legs and licked his way from the hollow of his throat and into his mouth. Pike nibbled on his lower lip, dragged his mouth up to his ear. 

‘You remember your safeword?’ 

‘Yeah.’

‘Say it.’

McCoy bit back an impatient growl. ‘Palomino,’ he said swiftly.

‘Good.’ Pike rewarded him with a delicate kiss. ‘Don’t forget it, because after I ask this one thing, nothing short of your safeword is going to keep me from doing whatever I want to you.’

He moaned at the promise in Pike’s tone, already shaken with helpless anticipation. ‘Then why are you asking at all?’ 

Pike pressed his lips thin, and in answer straightened up, leaned sideways, and opened the drawer of his bedside table. After another brief hesitation, he lifted out something looped black and silver around his long fingers. 

‘I wouldn’t presume to force this on you,’ he explained, his voice as stiff as the thick band of leather that he slowly unwound to reveal what could only be a collar. ‘You can say no to this, if it’s too much, or…’

‘Please.’ The word rasped rough from his throat. He dashed a desperate tongue over his lips, tried to speak more clearly. ‘Yes, please, I want it…’

Relief and hunger flooded Pike’s eyes. ‘Kiss me,’ he demanded roughly, parted mouth hovering tantalizing inches above him. McCoy arched upward to obey, the muscles of his neck and shoulders straining against the resistance of his shackled wrists. A low moan escaped him as his lips found their goal, a shuddering sound that melted into gratitude as a strong hand cradled his neck and supported him through a wetly clumsy kiss. His breath quickened as he felt the slide of leather against his skin, the nimble flicker of fingers over the buckle. 

‘Shh…’ Pike hushed soothingly over his lips, licking delicately at the gaping edges of his mouth as he gave the fastened collar a testing tug. ‘Not too tight, beautiful?’

He moaned wordlessly, briefly shook his head. The collar was snug against his neck, but not so tight that the leather didn’t slide with the pull of Pike’s finger hooked through its metal ring. Tempted though he was, he didn’t dare ask to have it fastened any tighter.

‘Good.’ Pike released his hold, skimmed his fingertips along the edge of where leather met flesh. ‘Love how it looks on you,’ he murmured. ‘Like you’re all mine…’ He dove in for another kiss, his tongue claiming him as thoroughly as the hands roaming possessively over his chest and hips. McCoy writhed beneath him, trying to reach with his body what he couldn’t touch with his hands and growling with frustration as Pike pulled back with a flushed and disheveled grin.

‘Eager, dirty thing.’ Pike pressed both hands down hard against his heaving chest. ‘I let you carry on like that and you’ll be humping my leg before I know it.’

‘And why is that a bad thing?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Because you don’t want to come before I decide you’ve earned it, now do you?’ He drew a fingertip up the trembling length of McCoy’s cock, smirking as he choked on a shaking groan. ‘So hot, so ready to make a mess of yourself all over again like the dirty, disobedient slut that you are…’

Pike’s finger hovered over the slick head of his cock, coaxing out the copious pre-come and slicking it down his length. ‘Then stop teasing me, damn it,’ he growled.

‘Is that going to be a problem?’ A hand grabbed his balls, squeezed hard enough to hold him safely within the realm of obedience. ‘I’ll touch you any way I like,’ Pike said sternly, ‘and if you can’t control yourself, I’ll just have to do it for you.’

Cautiously, McCoy stared down the length of his body, comprehension dawning as Pike drew out a simple leather cock ring, one fitted with additional straps to bind his balls. For all the simplicity of the thing, Pike made an excruciatingly slow job of it, squeezing and caressing his already engorged flesh before tugging the straps tight. McCoy groaned as the bite of leather trapped him at the edge of arousal, cock jutting impossibly hard and balls pulled cruelly downward. That more than the rest of the tight bondage made his helplessness feel complete, alarmingly real. 

‘That’s better,’ Pike murmured, sliding down between McCoy’s legs to appreciate his torment from a better angle. Hot, eager breath flowed over the taut skin of his scrotum, followed by a precise tongue that teased his bound cock and slicked the engorged vein all the way up to his tip before Pike swallowed him whole. McCoy groaned raggedly beneath the perfect suction of Pike’s mouth, panting heavily as he grew impossibly harder until the constriction of the cock ring became nearly unbearable. The slippery slide of Pike’s lips releasing his dick felt almost like a mercy, though there was nothing kind in the upward flicker of those blue eyes as he lowered his mouth to lave messily over his balls, even further down. 

Biting down hard on his lower lip, McCoy squeezed his eyes shut as Pike’s tongue found his twitching hole. He suppressed a first embarrassing whimper at a light lick across the surface of his skin, but failed to hold back a helpless cry as the tip of Pike’s tongue sharpened and stabbed shallowly inside. His head thrashed aside into the mattress, his body trembling hard as Pike fucked him open with his tongue, circling precise and wet into his very core. 

The harder, more solid pressure of a finger nudged alongside the softer tease of Pike’s tongue and slid unhesitatingly inside him, sparking a deeper pleasure against his prostate. He moaned as that finger drew away too soon, then choked on the sound as two fingers shoved in swiftly after. Pike stretched him mercilessly, spreading those two fingers wide enough to slip his tongue into the space they created inside him, barely letting him adjust to the intrusion before a third finger had worked its way inside.

McCoy’s thighs strained against the chains holding him open, a tender ache radiating from his distended hole. He dared to open his eyes, to watch as Pike drew back to shove four fingers inside, pushing the limits of the saliva slicking his opening. Eyes bright yet sharp, Pike tilted his head and brushed the pad of his thumb across his stretched flesh, probing gently but tearing an alarmed whimper from McCoy’s throat.

‘You wouldn’t…’

Pike glanced up, coolly amused. ‘I would,’ he corrected, nudging his thumb the slightest bit harder alongside his buried fingers. ‘If I wanted to, you couldn’t stop me.’

His insides clenched with a complicated surge of dread and desire, fluttering against the threat of Pike’s fingers before they slowly, wetly pulled away. McCoy groaned at the gaping emptiness they left behind, even as a dull sense of relief flooded over him.

‘But I don’t want you all sloppy and loose when I fuck you,’ Pike decided as he rose up on his knees, towering imperiously over McCoy’s waiting body as he unfastened his jeans. McCoy stared, tongue darting over his lips as Pike drew out his cock, so gorgeously long and flushed a deep red, and slicked himself with a generous handful of lube. Pike bent his thigh further back as he nudged himself against his entrance, teasing slick across the surface of his hole before sinking inside with an urgency that ripped a fresh gasp from McCoy’s parched throat. ‘I want you like _this,_ ’ he growled, breathlessly harsh as he pulled back in a slow, agonizingly slide that tugged at his flesh before slamming home again. ‘Still so tight, almost as if you could resist this...’

His hand trailed up McCoy’s body as he fucked with a slow intensity, shoving his fingertips along his heaving torso and lingering over his nipples, grinning savagely at McCoy’s strangled whine before leaning in closer and catching the ring on his collar. ‘Fuck, that look in your eyes,’ he breathed. ‘Even now you look ready to claw me to shreds... if only I didn’t have you chained down...’

McCoy glowered into Pike’s heated stare. He didn’t have a damn clue how he looked but the smug twist at the corner of Pike’s gorgeous mouth screamed out to be bitten. Leaning down at that predatory angle, he was nearly within reach; McCoy lunged upward, growled his frustration as Pike simultaneously snapped up out of reach and slammed him back down to the mattress by his collar. The next thrust of Pike’s cock was fierce as punishment, punching hard against his prostate and making his limbs tremble within their bonds.

‘Again,’ he snarled, steeling the smallest part of his spine that hadn’t liquefied beneath Pike’s cock. ‘Damn it, _more_.’

Pike smirked, gave his collar a sharper tug that caught his scarce breath. ‘Why should I give you more than what you deserve, you greedy little slut?’ he asked, a cruel note lacing his voice as he rolled his hips so slow, too damn gentle. He leaned back down, mocked McCoy’s earlier attempt to take his mouth by licking roughly at his scowling lips before rising back up. ‘You’re mine, and I’ll fuck you however I like.’ One hand pinned his thigh, pressed it even further back, while the other closed tight around the rigid length of his bound cock, using it as an indifferent handhold as Pike resumed a long, leisurely stroke that made McCoy’s eyes roll back in his head.

‘Not complaining now, are you?’ Each thrust of Pike’s cock was sparking off his prostate now, stabbing a bright pleasure down his spine before sliding back to pull him open and pierce him through again. ‘I can tell... you love taking my cock like this... can’t fight back, can’t even come unless I let you... should I let you, beautiful?’ 

His grip on McCoy’s cock loosened, fingers sliding upward to squeeze the flushed crown and thumb the moisture beading from the slit. ‘Why even ask what I want?’ McCoy growled, jaw tensed as he fought to force words past his crumbling desire to beg shamelessly for release. ‘If I’m nothing more than your whore...’

Pike’s eyes flared dark and hot. ‘Is that what you are?’ he said, low and intense as his hips rolled faster, harder. ‘Say it again…’

‘ _Yes..._ yes, fuck me, fuck your whore, anything you want...’ Utterly entranced, McCoy watched as Pike lost the last fragile shards of his control, head dropping weakly forward with a deep groan as he came hard, spilling himself into McCoy’s body in several powerful bursts that soothed some of the ache building inside even as it left him helplessly twitching after his own need. 

McCoy winced as Pike’s cock slipped out, excruciatingly slow and slick. His overexerted hole twitched weakly, trying in vain to keep him inside; Pike chuckled breathlessly, dug his fingers hard into his thighs as he pulled himself away and gazed down between his spread legs. A rush of humiliated arousal made his cock throb against his belly; he could feel the hot trickle of come spilling over his ass.

‘I don’t think your greedy little hole has had enough yet,’ he purred. The fingers clenching his left thigh relented, trailed through the semen coating his skin and plunged back inside, forcing the excess come back in with them. McCoy groaned, clenching weakly around his fingers. ‘Can’t stand going without a hard cock in you, can you?’

‘Please…’ His hips pushed helplessly into Pike’s hand, squirming to connect the tips of those fingers with his prostate, anything that might help him find release. As though sensing his need, Pike plunged his fingers deep, then pulled back until he was only shallowly teasing at the rim.

‘Fingers won’t do for you anymore.’ Pike thumbed over his relaxed sphincter muscle, loose and wet. ‘Need something a lot bigger to fill you up…’

He reached past McCoy’s bound leg for the bedside table and its open drawer, smirking at McCoy’s watchfulness and not bothering to conceal the next thing to emerge. Not that Pike had a chance in hell of hiding a dildo as massive as the one in his hand. The thing was longer than any reasonable human male and absurdly thick with ridges that rippled along its sleekly black length. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Souvenir from Cardassia. Long story.’ With no further preamble, he drew its tapered head down between his legs until it found his slick and loosened hole. The cool, rounded tip of the dildo penetrated him with embarrassing ease, sinking fully inside him, claiming him far deeper than Pike had reached with his own cock. McCoy gasped at the unfamiliar sensation, whimpered too loudly as the dildo kept moving as soon as it had gone as far as it could and slid back out again.

‘I don’t think you’ve earned the right to come just yet,’ Pike growled darkly, letting the toy slip nearly all the way out before pushing back in. ‘Think I’ll just keep playing with your pretty ass until your desperate little moans get me hard enough to fuck you again.’

He whimpered as the dildo slid out, punched past his prostate again and made stars explode behind his tightly shut eyes. Even if Pike continued to neglect his cock, the toy and the taunts might be enough to push him over the edge.

He shuddered as Pike breathed hot over his trapped erection, delicately licked the pre-come slicking the head. ‘You sick bastard,’ he gasped.

‘Complain all you like.’ Pike sucked him harder for several mind-blowing seconds, hard enough to pull his brains out through his cock if it hadn’t been so securely bound, before glancing up again with a vicious smirk. ‘No one’s coming to help you…’ Pike shoved the dildo all the way in to its flared base and gave his ass a firm slap before abandoning his cock entirely. His mouth moved instead to the hours-old fingertip bruises on his hips, biting a stinging path up his belly to his chest. His teeth found his left nipple, worried it ruthlessly as his thumb rolled slow and hard over the right. McCoy thrashed his head to the side as Pike’s teeth tugged harder at his nipple, biting down on his tongue to muffle the embarrassing sounds of his reluctant pleasure.

‘I knew these were more sensitive than you ever let on,’ he murmured tauntingly, thumbing over both nipples at once and chuckling at McCoy’s strangled whine. ‘Think this would be enough to get you off?’ 

McCoy glared as best he could, no matter how hard his body was trembling. ‘You’re not that good,’ he spat.

‘What if I didn’t give you any other way out?’ Pike pinched him sharply, eyes flaring hot as a shout escaped McCoy’s throat. ‘What if I kept you tied up just like this and refused to touch you anywhere else, nothing but _this_ ,’ he gentled his touch, circled maddeningly light over his abused flesh, ‘no matter how much you begged, until you couldn’t help but come all over yourself…’

His bound cock twitched hard at the threat. ‘I don’t think you’re that patient either,’ he said tightly, his face flushing impossibly hotter as Pike continued to tease his nipples to impossible hardness.

‘You might be right,’ Pike smirked. ‘At least, for now.’ His hands skimmed away from McCoy’s chest, though the throbbing ache in his nipples remained as Pike’s hands wandered past his bound erection and along his spread thighs. Gripping one leg securely, Pike pressed a wet kiss against the inside of his knee before unhooking the chain from the strap around his thigh. Without its tension holding him up, his leg sagged as clumsy as a puppet with cut strings. He winced as the shift of his body nudged the dildo against his prostate; his other leg dropped and it prodded even deeper, hard enough to make McCoy gasp and squirm against the sheets.

‘None of that.’ Pike stilled his hips with a firm grip with both hands and a warning eyebrow. ‘Maybe if you’re a good little whore I’ll let you ride that big fake cock for me later,’ he added, a low afterthought that shot another sharp spike of lust up McCoy’s spine. ‘But not now. Move.’

He frowned, confused until he caught on to the sideways tug of Pike’s hands on his hips. That push did far more than his own body could to turn over on the bed; his bound hands were of little help though there was thankfully enough slack in the chain to not twist his arms on the way. He landed with a thump on his front, sucking in a sharp breath as his erection was caught between the mattress and his belly. He raised his hips in a weak effort to adjust himself and found Pike’s hand there again, pulling him up.

‘That’s it, up on your knees…’ That took far more effort from his shaken legs than McCoy thought he could muster but the enticement of Pike’s steady grasp and low, rumbling voice pushed him onward, thighs straining until he had got his knees planted firmly beneath him. Quietly pleased at the accomplishment, he rested on his elbows and raised his upper body up from the bed, only to slam back down again beneath the weight of Pike’s hand on the back on his neck.

‘No,’ he corrected, velvet-soft yet stern. ‘I want you like _this_.’ 

Even after everything else, _this_ made McCoy’s skin grow hot, burning between humiliation and want, between the coarse stimulation of his aching nipples chafing against the sheets and the rush of cool air against his exposed ass. A finger trailed after the new line Pike had drawn in the bend of his spine, from the edge of his collar along the upward slope of his back, down to the base of the dildo still lodged inside him. Pike nudged it gently, more than enough to wrest a muffled whimper from his throat.

‘Perfect,’ he breathed. Feather-light touch travelled between his legs, down his inner thighs. Through the fog of his arousal, McCoy heard the rattle of chains, felt his legs strain slightly wider apart as the leads from the bedposts were clipped back onto the straps above his knees. He tested his new range of movement, swallowed tightly past the collar as he was tethered into place, unable to resist the groping hand that slipped between his legs and cupped his bound genitals. ‘Still alright?’

McCoy sucked in an unsteady breath, startled by the gentle whisper of Pike’s voice so close to his ear. He forced his eyes open and made his head turn sideways on the bed, straining awkwardly towards a glimpse of his Chris. ‘I thought you weren’t asking, darling,’ he murmured, his bravado fading rapidly as his gaze dropped to the belt dangling from Pike’s hand, snakelike and ready to strike.

‘You know how to stop this,’ he reminded McCoy gently, closing a hand firmly over his ass. The chance to back down hovered unspoken in his voice, but it served only to nudge him further away from the sort of surrender Pike offered and towards its opposite shore.

‘Just get on with it if you’re gonna do it,’ he snapped impatiently, already tensing for the first blow and nearly jumping out of his skin when Pike merely pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the small of his back.

‘I should have known,’ he murmured. ‘Had to be a reason why you act like such an insufferable little shit… why you came for me back in the stable before I’d even touched you…’

‘You touched me plenty back there,’ he corrected tightly, shuddering as Pike’s hand settled lightly over the echo of where he had spanked him earlier at the peak of that ruthless fuck. 

‘Not very gently though,’ he murmured. A taunting note flavoured the sound of Pike’s voice rasping at his ear, a cruel counterpoint to the gentle circling of his hand over the offering of upraised ass. ‘Look at you…’ he sighed. ‘I can think of at least half a dozen instructors at the Academy who would kill to be in my place. They’d love the chance to beat that insubordination right out of you…’

Pike withdrew with a light kiss to his shoulder, nothing like a warning for the belt that cracked through air a split second later and snapped across his ass. He flinched, but managed to bite back his startled gasp. Eyes squeezed shut, he buried his face between his outstretched arms as Pike’s fingers traced that first welt, hovering silent as though waiting for some reaction on his part. As the sting faded to an ache and then to nothing, he lifted his head from the bed and licked nervously at his lips.

‘Not my fault they’re a bunch of damn fools,’ he muttered.

Pike let loose a swift hint of a laugh. ‘It’s your fault for never learning to shut up and obey orders.’ A second snap of the belt crossed the first. ‘Good little cadets don’t question their superiors.’ 

A third, louder blow finally wrested a low grunt from his throat. ‘Not interested in being a _good little cadet_ ,’ he drawled disdainfully, hips shifting restlessly as heat spread over his buttocks. 

‘Don’t I know it.’ The next strike fell harder, was chased down by three more that cracked in rapid succession until the fourth made him muffle a cry into the bedding, breath gasping deep in his chest. Pike had drawn away from him to deliver those blows, and he moaned softly in relief to feel the hard length of his body draped heavily over him again, even at the cost of a denim-clad thigh rubbing torturously over the welts on his ass.

‘You think you’re too good for the rules, don’t you, Doctor?’ The hand bearing the belt dragged up his heaving ribcage and under his shoulder. ‘If you think you’re that special, I can make a few exceptions when it comes to keeping you in line…’ His fingers forced his chin up from the bed and thrust suddenly into his mouth. ‘Might start making you wear a gag to all your classes, give everyone a break from your bitchy attitude…’ 

McCoy moaned embarrassingly loud around Pike’s fingers, temporarily blinded by the images spilling themselves over his overwrought mind. 

‘Something sturdy, before you go getting any ideas of taking it out,’ he continued in a darkly warning tone. Pike used the leverage of his fingers to turn McCoy’s head to the side, all the better to watch as his fingers slipped out and smudged wetly over his lips. ‘No, I’d keep that filthy mouth of yours under lock and key… you’d have to keep me very happy indeed before I’d even think of taking it out long enough to feed you anything other than my cock…’

‘Chris…’ The plea left his mouth ragged and raw, carried on lips working desperately at Pike’s fingers even as they ached for more. He tugged at his restraints, blood pounding in his ears. ‘Fuck, Chris…’

Pike pulled away abruptly, and McCoy’s senseless noise died on a shout as the belt snapped hard across his thighs. ‘That’s _sir_ to you, boy,’ he growled viciously, layering blows across his ass. ‘Don’t you ever learn…’

‘Make me, sir,’ he snarled back, shivering as Pike unleashed another low growl and crowded in close again, both hands clawing over his abused ass, the belt seemingly discarded.

‘I’ll make you, alright.’ Pike seized the base of the dildo, worked it in short strokes between the tight press of their bodies. ‘I’ll make you _beg_ , you filthy slut…’ 

McCoy groaned deeply, angling his hips backward in vain hope of aiming the rapidly pumping head of the dildo over his prostate but Pike kept each thrust frustratingly shallow. ‘Do it,’ he rasped harshly, struggling to glare back over his shoulder. ‘C’mon, weren’t you the big man saying you’d get it up again and fuck me twice?’ 

His efforts won him the fleeting glance of cold eyes and an amused smirk before the sudden withdrawal of the dildo made him flinch and cry out in mingled pain and frustration. ‘Fucking brat.’ Pike’s open palm slapped his ass hard, setting his welts throbbing again. ‘You’ll get _nothing_ until you learn to ask nice.’

‘Fuck you.’ His defiant growl was broken by a hoarse cry as Pike slapped him again, harder. ‘You want it,’ he panted, head dropping back down between his bound arms. ‘You sadistic bastard, you know you do…’

‘Not as bad as you need it.’ There was a rustle of hands and denim against his skin and _there_ , the hot slide of hard flesh glancing up the inside of his thigh. ‘Beg for it.’ Pike’s voice was hushed, almost kind despite the harsh demand. ‘Beg me, and I might even let you come.’

‘Damn it, man,’ he snapped, ‘ _fuck me._ ’

Pike chuckled darkly, but McCoy’s hyperaware flesh didn’t miss the needy twitch of his cock as it dragged closer to its goal. ‘Do you even know how to beg?’ Despite his chiding tone, an encouraging finger was teasing at his entrance, so damn close to giving in.

‘Do you think I care?’

‘You should.’ But he didn’t, because Pike was sinking inside him now, so sudden and deep that it stole McCoy’s breath and dropped him sagging to the bed in relief. He released a heartfelt groan as Pike slid back in a long, slow stroke and stabbed home again, sparking sharp against his prostate.

‘You may not care now, but I’ll show you,’ Pike threatened, breathless as he set a punishing pace that punched the air from McCoy’s straining lungs with every thrust. ‘Now I’ve got you exactly where I want you… I’m not letting you leave here until I’ve made you beg…’

‘You think… _ah…_ ’ McCoy buried his face in the mattress, tears pricking behind his clenched eyelids as Pike’s hand closed around his throbbing, captive cock.

‘You were saying?’ Pike asked politely as he tormented McCoy’s engorged flesh, taunting him to force a reply from his choked throat.

‘Think you can pull that off on one lousy weekend?’ He bit down hard on his lip as soon as he spat the words out, but the hint of a whimper still edged his words, forced to the surface by the roll of Pike’s hips into him. 

‘Pretty thing,’ he purred, leaning down close over his back to hush over his sweating back, ‘what makes you think I’ll let you go at all?’

He pulled back, thrust in again _hard_ , slapped his ass harder still in a dual shock wave that nearly distracted McCoy from the snap that released his cock and balls from their constricting cage and into Pike’s hand. ‘Starfleet doesn’t know I’ve got you chained to my bed and impaled on my cock somewhere in the desert…’ he hissed harshly as he closed a ruthless fist around McCoy’s overeager dick. ‘They don’t know where you are, they don’t know about us… no one would ever find you if I decided to keep you here…’

‘Oh, fuck…’ He moaned helplessly, squirming through the thrill of danger that shot down his spine at the truth in Pike’s words, thrusting futilely at the vice grip of Pike’s hand.

‘I’d keep you in the stables.’ Pike draped himself along McCoy’s back, both arms closing tight around him. ‘Throw you in one of the stalls, leave you bound and helpless… let Adam and his boys keep you in line until I felt like coming back and taking you out for a ride…’

McCoy quaked hard beneath the weight of Pike’s body and threats, succumbed to the unexpected shove that flattened him to the bed. He landed hard on his side, arms and legs still twisted against their tethers though spread open enough to keep Pike’s cock firmly lodged inside him. Tossing his head free of his upstretched arms, he tried to catch Pike’s cold eyes and groaned loudly as a strong forearm slung itself across his chest, pressing him down as a hand found his cock again.

‘Even if you did beg, I wouldn’t let you go,’ he vowed hoarsely, seizing McCoy’s cock with a slippery hand and jerking him fast. ‘I’d keep you, just like this… keep you begging, make you stay… all mine, _fuck_ mine…’

McCoy whimpered sharply, twisted his head back into the shelter of his arm as his orgasm was wrenched, _finally_ from his body in a series of explosive spasms that set his limbs quivering against his restraints. Without the ability to move, he shook hard through the aftershocks, mouth panting wide and unresisting as Pike pressed damp fingers to his lips.

Somewhere in the white muffled warmth, he felt the loss of Pike’s heat and hummed his instinctive gratitude when it returned soon enough. He moved unresistingly into each silent directive of Pike’s hands as they loosened one bond at a time and gently sponged away the semen and sweat rapidly drying on his overheated skin, progressing with painstaking slowness from thighs to chest then underarms. McCoy groggily turned his head to catch Pike’s lips in another kiss as his head passed his shoulder on the way to his bound arms.

‘Leave it,’ he murmured, tongue thick and unthinking against Pike’s lips. Pike’s smallest gasp stole a teaspoon’s worth of his breath, prompted McCoy’s heavy eyelids to open as he withdrew out of reach of his kiss.

‘You can’t possibly sleep like this,’ Pike admonished softly, to which McCoy huffed an exhausted chuckle.

‘I’m ready to pass out no matter what, I’m that worn out.’ With much sluggish effort, he rolled his hips sideways to push his body closer into Pike’s comforting warmth. ‘Rather sleep like this… feels good… safe…’

An arm curled around his waist, helping him draw closer into the kiss Pike pressed to his brow. ‘You’re always safe with me, beautiful…’ McCoy heard the distant rattle of the chain above his head and moaned softly as its tension slackened, dropping his deadened arms loose to the bed. ‘Don’t want you to lose circulation in your sleep, Doctor,’ he chided, a touch of irony lacing his low murmur as he tugged the thin bed sheet up to cover them both. ‘And you need to promise you’ll wake me if you need me to let you go,’ he added sternly. ‘Even if it’s to scratch an itch you can’t reach, you wake me up. Got it?’

McCoy mumbled something in lazy assent, eyelids already dropping shut as he nudged his way into the few gaps remaining between his skin and that of his lover. He tucked a leg between Pike’s thighs, nosed at Pike’s hair as he tucked his head beneath McCoy’s dropping chin and pressed a kiss to the base of his throat, traced the edge of his collar…

The gentle slip of Pike’s tongue across his lips was unexpected, but not unwelcome. McCoy hummed lazily in response, blearily surprised by Pike’s restless refusal to let him drift off to sleep before the tickle of light beyond his closed eyelids startled him into wakefulness. 

‘Good morning, beautiful.’

He blinked uncertainly, blinded by the closeness of blue-grey eyes staring fondly into him before he registered the soft light that filled the entire room. ‘Morning?’ he repeated uncertainly. That appeared to be the case, but McCoy couldn’t remember the last time he had slept so deeply without so much as an anxious twitch or accusatory dream. 

‘Still is for now, anyway.’ Pike’s smiled widened as he combed wayward strands of hair back from McCoy’s furrowed brow. ‘We’ll have to chain you to the bed more often if it gets you such a good night’s sleep.’

A flush of warmth crawled across his skin, nerve endings suddenly awake and alert to the leather cuffs around his wrists. His arms had crept above his head in his sleep and tangled loosely in the chain that still secured him to the headboard, exposing his naked body from collared throat to the precarious drape of the sheet barely covering his hips. By contrast, Pike seemed suspiciously well groomed and fully dressed. ‘How long have you been up?’ 

‘Long enough to get a start on breakfast.’ Pike reached for a small silver knife on the bedside table, and McCoy’s eyes widened with a frisson of fear that passed with a weak laugh when a bright red apple followed. An understanding smirk touched the corner of Pike’s mouth as he carved a slice that set juices running down the blade and onto his fingers. ‘Here…’

Pike balanced the slice on the flat of his knife and poised it within reach of McCoy’s mouth. A raised eyebrow got him the same in return, so McCoy parted his lips with a sigh, heart hammering as Pike fed the fruit onto his cautious tongue. The apple was cool and moist on his tongue, crisp between his teeth as he slowly chewed. Its fresh juices slaked the sleep from the inside of his mouth and sent a refreshing spark of sugar into his bloodstream.

‘Good?’ McCoy nodded as he swallowed, eyes widening as Pike pulled his legs up onto the mattress and shifted to straddle his belly. He stretched and squirmed with half-awake anticipation, biting down on the inside of his lip as his cock stirred beneath the sheet. ‘Open up, then…’

He obediently opened his mouth, hopeful of something other than breakfast but playing along as Pike cut more pieces from the apple and fed them to him, one bite at a time. The patient pace eased his anxiety of the knife’s edge; McCoy tentatively chased a rivulet of juice from the flat of the blade as he caught the next apple slice, humming low around his mouthful as Pike’s eyes widened and darkened. 

‘Clever boy.’ He offered up another bite, breathing out a low groan as McCoy slowly lapped it away from the knife’s steel surface. ‘You and that mouth of yours…’ The next slice was fed to him by Pike’s fingers, which slipped the apple onto his tongue and lingered on his lips as he chewed and swallowed. 

Once done, McCoy latched onto those teasing fingertips and suckled at the juices coating his skin, staring hard into startled eyes with what he hoped was an obvious invitation. He felt the shudder of Pike’s thighs against his hips and moaned his relief as the fingers in his mouth prised him open before filling him with the sudden heat of Pike’s kiss tearing him open. His tongue moved in rapid concert with the fingers that still pushed greedily at his apple-stained lips, making McCoy squirm beneath Pike’s body with a sharp arch of his hips and a faint rattle of his chained wrists.

At that first chiming sound, Pike broke away with a rasping breath, resting brow to brow as he gasped towards self-control. ‘I was going to make you breakfast.’ 

‘Thought we were already having breakfast,’ McCoy pointed out, frustration adding a sarcastic edge to his drawl.

‘I won’t have you riding today on a near-empty stomach.’ As though that decided the matter, Pike shuffled upward on his knees and reached for the cuffs on McCoy’s wrists. A flutter of regret beat through his chest as Pike freed his hands and needlessly massaged his listless fingers. ‘I’m making waffles.’

McCoy stared up at his lover with a suspicious frown. ‘Who are you, and what have you done with Christopher Pike?’

‘Smartass.’ He laid a too light slap on McCoy’s cheek then pushed up off the bed, retrieving the apple core and his gleaming knife. ‘Get yourself moving, already. I want you in the kitchen before breakfast gets cold.’

‘Aye aye, Captain,’ he grumbled, but Pike was already striding out of the bedroom with one last parting smirk.

McCoy stretched his awakening limbs long across the mattress, frowning moodily at the ceiling as he willed his body into usefulness. His skin was flushing hot and shivering cold with the so-close memory of Pike’s body over him, fingers and lips and yes, even that knife, all snatched away far too soon. He chased the hopeful sensation down the centre of his chest, let his hand slip beneath the bunched folds of the bed sheet. His cock throbbed harder beneath the tentative squeeze of his fingers, lively and greedy for more. Eyes slipping shut, he indulged in a few teasing strokes, thighs spreading wider apart as his other hand trailed up his restless body, a soft moan curled up the back of his throat.

His wandering touch grew more frenetic as he stroked himself faster, closer, until the brush of leather beneath his fingertips cut him short with a gasp. Eyes flying open, McCoy froze against the mattress, all motion locked down save for the single finger tracing around his neck. Even with his lover gone out the room and down the hall, there was no escaping his presence, not when his collar still held his throat and his scent still suffused the sheets. 

That realization made it easier to release his hold on his cock, but he gritted his teeth all the same when his rigid length brushed his abdomen in his upright curl from the bed. He closed his eyes, willed his erection to calm the hell down before he dared move again, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress and rising unsteadily to his feet. A pleasantly savoury scent wafted down the hall and filled his nose on a bracing inhale; breakfast did smell pretty damn good, and probably too close to completion for any other activities. 

Not that mere waffles were going to stop him from trying.

‘I was thinking we could go out further today,’ Pike greeted as he stepped into the kitchen after a hasty five minutes in the bathroom. He wisely kept his eyes trained on the cutting board and knife as he neatly reduced a variety of fresh fruit to pieces of equal sizes. ‘Off the grid, into the desert proper. I know you don’t care much for artificial orchards,’ he added with a wry smile over his shoulder.

‘Sounds good,’ McCoy agreed readily, though he hung back when the smile dropped from those lips. Heart pounding quick in his chest, McCoy watched the knife clatter to the cutting board, swallowing tightly as Pike turned and crossed the kitchen.

‘You’re still wearing it,’ he said hoarsely. Pike lifted a hand to the base of his throat, brushing the lower edge of the thick leather still sitting snug against his skin and plainly visible above the v-neck of the t-shirt he had thrown on after a quick shower. 

‘You didn’t give me permission to take it off,’ he replied simply.

Pike’s eyes widened, flashing bright with a burst of arousal that he quickly stifled beneath a forcibly cool show of control. ‘Are you asking my permission?’ he asked quietly as he traced the collar’s circumference to its shining buckle. A raw and rough edge lingered in his voice, ruining any attempt at indifference and sending a sympathetic heat racing down McCoy’s spine. 

‘I don’t think that’s for me to decide, sir.’ 

From this close, he could see Pike’s pupils blow large and dark. ‘I don’t think you want me deciding that for you,’ he warned quietly. ‘Leave it up to me, and I might never take it off.’

‘Then maybe you shouldn’t.’ Resting his hands tentatively on Pike’s hips, McCoy bowed his head into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, pressing his mouth delicately to the skin above his partially buttoned shirt. ‘All that talk last night about teaching me to obey… sure you want to give up on trying so soon?’

An uneven groan rolled up Pike’s throat, rumbled against McCoy’s parted lips. ‘I wouldn’t want to take advantage…’ he protested tentatively, unconvincingly.

‘And I don’t like being left hanging, darling.’ He sank a slow, hard bite into the tensed muscle of Pike’s shoulder. ‘Waking me up like that, kneeling over me with that knife, then just letting me loose and walking out? Way I see it, you can either do the right thing by your guest, or I can go back to bed and finish things off for myself.’

‘Is that what you’d rather be doing?’ Pike’s fingers curled into his hair, pulled his head back from his neck to meet his narrowed eyes. The tug at his scalp was just sharp enough to stir the blood in his veins and pull a daring smirk to his lips.

‘It’s what I started doing once you walked out on me,’ he murmured. 

‘Not too late for that.’ Pike transferred his hold to the hem of his t-shirt, which he tugged upward so briskly that McCoy barely had time to raise his arms to help as the thin fabric was whisked away from his body. He dropped his arms around Pike as soon as he head was clear of constricting cloth, tugging his body close and claiming a greedy kiss that ended too soon as Pike shoved him back until his thighs hit the kitchen table and turned his attention to McCoy’s loose-fitting sleep pants, simultaneously sliding his hands beneath the waistband and peeling them down to his thighs. ‘I want you to show me,’ he whispered. ‘Right here…’

He fell back beneath the coaxing of Pike’s hands, fell until he lay flat across the kitchen table. Pike stripped his pants off entirely and shoved his thighs apart, leaning in and licking the full length of his cock in a feral stroke that made McCoy cry out in surprise and arch off the table.

‘Gorgeous,’ he purred, eyes sweeping possessively up and down McCoy’s restless body. ‘Go on, then,’ he urged, ‘you want to touch yourself so badly, you can do it while I watch.’

With a sharp breath, McCoy let his right hand drift towards his dick, his eyes fixed to Pike’s heated gaze as he pushed upright and circled the table, fingertips lingering on his thigh and trailing upward as he moved. That faintest touch sparked off the urgency already racing beneath his skin, throbbing thick through his blood and pulsing beneath his fingers as McCoy slid his hand around himself with a low, grateful groan. At that first touch, his eyelids shuddered shut, his awareness of his lover narrowed down to the path of his fingers climbing his body, the light tread of his steps around the table.

‘Dirty boy…’ Pike’s touch rode the heaving of his chest, brushed a jolt of sensation from his nipple that shot straight down to his cock. McCoy bucked sharply into his hand, thumbing rapidly at his slit to tease out the pre-come beading there and letting it coat his fingers. It wasn’t enough to ease the friction of his hand, which was probably for the best if he wanted to last more than a few seconds. Pike had moved past his clavicle and was playing with his collar now, stroking and tugging fit to make McCoy squirm across the table. Biting down on his lower lip to repress a pathetic whine, he shoved his other hand down between his legs, cupping his balls and tugging just hard enough to keep from exploding all over himself as Pike’s soft moan poured over him.

‘None of that.’ Fingers caught his jaw, prodding at his mouth until his teeth released his lower lip. ‘Don’t want to make this pretty mouth bleed…’

‘You sure about that?’ His pleasure temporarily brought under control, McCoy met Pike’s eyes as he caught his fingers lightly between his lips, memorizing his fingerprints with the tip of his tongue. ‘I’d let you…’

Pike’s eyes flared with a shock of arousal before they narrowed down to fierce focus. ‘I can think of better things to do with that mouth,’ he said softly, tracing his lips with his thumb. ‘Come here…’ The fingers hooked in his collar tugged harder, urging him sideways until his head reached the edge of the table, where Pike held him in place as his other hand fumbled at his flies. McCoy’s hands slowed as he stared, tongue darting over his lips as Pike drew out his cock, already hard and beautifully flushed. The velvet heat of the crown brushed his hungry lips, teased the tip of his tongue then plunged perfect and full into his mouth. With a low groan, McCoy closed his eyes, the better to drown in Pike’s scent and taste, the weight of his lust on his tongue answering and amplifying the throbbing of his own arousal in his hand. He stroked himself faster, pacing his pleasure to the thrust of Pike’s cock past his lips. 

‘You love having that filthy mouth of yours stuffed full of cock, don’t you…’ Pike growled as he used his grip on McCoy’s hair to bend his head to a better angle ‘Love being forced to shut up and take it…’

His incoherent moan of agreement was stifled by the deeper plunge of cock at the back of his throat, nearly stealing his breath. McCoy breathed heavily through his nose, willing his body to yield to Pike’s use even as his hips stirred restlessly and his legs bent and parted against the table, helpless to control any part of himself that wasn’t controlled by Pike’s hand.

McCoy gasped for air as Pike’s cock was pulled from his mouth, wet with saliva that eased its owner’s rapidly pumping fist as thick ropes of come splashed hot over McCoy’s face and chest. Several precious drops slicked his panting lips, and McCoy moaned as he licked them away and worked his cock faster, rapidly nearing his own release but still holding back, as though waiting for permission or…

Wet fingers tangled with his own, riding swiftly along with his rapid stroke and it was all the urging McCoy needed to succumb to orgasm with a spine snapping intensity that knocked his head back into the table as his hips thrust helplessly through their joined hands. His Chris’ touch was inseparable from his own but then there was a slick something circling his pulsing glans and McCoy shouted out hoarsely as Pike’s mouth closed around him, suckling away the last weak pulses of his come with a low hum that vibrated through his wreaked body. 

With a monumental effort, McCoy lifted his head and moaned weakly as Pike pulled off his softening cock with a feral glint in his eye and licked through the come pooling in the hollow above his hipbone, wet heat building upon his sweating skin that shuddered through him as Pike’s tongue lapped delicately at the mess on his skin. Sagging helplessly slack across the table, McCoy could only shiver and watch through half-lidded eyes as Pike – fuck - _crawled_ onto the table and methodically devoured every trace of their mutual orgasms from his body, a low growl rumbling from deep within his chest as his mouth prowled from groin to throat until he dropped heavily alongside him with a final, almost bestial slip of his tongue across a lightly spattered cheekbone. McCoy chased him towards a loose and lazy kiss, though it only lasted a few seconds before they both broke for air, gasping for the same oxygen, lips and noses still brushing together.

As they lay sweating and panting across the kitchen table, Pike traced the collar again with a thoughtful furrow between his eyebrows. ‘You can’t possibly want to leave this on,’ he murmured, a frail thread of hope underlying his skepticism.

‘Why the hell not?’ Warm and lazy with orgasm, McCoy threw an arm over Pike’s waist to pull him in closer. ‘I’ve still got a safeword if you try anything too crazy. Besides,’ he drawled indifferently, ‘it’s not like you have the stamina to make something of it all the time.’

‘Don’t be so sure about that,’ Pike growled, a threat that diffused itself beneath the nuzzling warmth of his breath against McCoy’s shoulder. ‘I can be very creative if I’m properly inspired, and this…’ He gave the collar the slightest tug, all the prompting McCoy needed to follow its pull and catch Pike’s lips in a slow, filthy kiss. ‘Fuck,’ he breathed as they finally parted, ‘very inspiring,’ he finished breathlessly. ‘And too damn distracting.’

‘And why is that a problem?’ McCoy slid a playful hand down the back of Pike’s unfastened jeans, finding a groping handful of his firm ass before Pike snatched his wrist with a low growl and rolled on top of him, pinning him down to the table.

‘Because I didn’t bring Tara across this continent so she could languish in her stall because her owner’s too busy riding my cock,’ he said softly, blue eyes sparking with amusement and something harder underneath. ‘And I can’t very well serve up breakfast if you’re spread out on my kitchen table looking all fuckable like this.’

‘I’m only on your table because you put me here.’ He drew his free hand up Pike’s spine, grinning at his visible shudder of arousal. ‘And I’d happily get out of your way, only you seem to be holding me down.’

‘Fair enough.’ With a parting kiss, Pike eased himself off McCoy’s prone body and deftly rolled up from the table before turning and offering him a hand up. ‘Get some clothes on and try to behave yourself if you can,’ he said firmly. ‘Any more distractions and I’ll have to tie you down to a chair to feed you.’

McCoy paused from retrieving his clothes from the floor, raised a challenging eyebrow. ‘Is that a promise?’

An arch look answered him as Pike hefted his chef’s knife.

It took another hour longer than entirely necessary, but the waffles were well worth the wait.


	4. Chapter 4

‘Do you like it?’

McCoy stared out across the rippling warmth of the Mojave, inhaling a heat that could have been home, if not for the hardened dry edge that sucked any moisture from the air. Beyond the preserve of the terraformed settlement they had left behind, the Mojave was aggressive, yet breathtaking. Not so different, really, from the man now asking his approval of this land that resisted any change. 

An indulgent warmth, gentler than the desert, filled his lungs as he met his lover’s sidelong and slightly anxious gaze. ‘It’s incredible,’ he murmured. He reached for Pike’s idle hand, drew him closer until he could wrap a reassuring arm around his waist. ‘Thank you,’ he added, pressing a light kiss to his sweating neck.

‘There’s nothing to thank me for,’ Pike protested in a soft tone that was appallingly genuine. With a low snort, McCoy tugged him closer until they stood chest to back, his hands tangled together low around Pike’s waist as he brushed his lips over the back of his neck.

‘Of course there is.’ He squeezed Pike tighter, allowing his body to drink in every addictive plane of his lover’s honed torso beneath the thin cloth of his shirt. ‘There’s Tara…’ McCoy cast a cautious eye to his horse, relieved to see her idly nosing over the sparse greenery alongside Tango. ‘And letting me share this with you.’

‘I’ve wanted to bring you here for the longest time.’ Pike’s hands settled over his own, fingers weaving familiarly together. ‘I haven’t been out here for some time, not since…’ An abrupt silence broke Pike’s words; McCoy felt his body stiffen slightly in his arms and lifted his head, heart heavy with concern.

‘Chris?’

Pike’s hands squeezed his. ‘Not since… I used to ride out here with One.’

An alert shiver stiffened McCoy’s spine; he knew something of the number’s meaning, though not nearly enough. ‘Your ex-wife,’ he clarified, frowning as Pike rapidly shook his head.

‘My first officer, before anything else,’ he corrected. ‘We were far better crewmates than we ever were spouses. That’s how I’d rather remember her if I had my choice of memories, but…’ Pike sighed, unwinding subtly into McCoy’s arms. ‘That’s not how it went at all.’

McCoy flexed his forearms reflexively around Pike’s waist as he stared blankly out at the endless Mojave, his incomplete thoughts hovering in the heavy heat. An open door seemed to have cracked the narrow space between their bodies in a tentative invitation that tugged at McCoy’s curiosity even as he worried what the asking might cost him in return. 

The silence of expectation was growing too large, however, too thick to ignore so McCoy gently cleared his throat and parted his lips. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Yorktown was my first command,’ Pike began, taking up McCoy’s question without hesitation. ‘I was lucky to have the best crew I could have hoped for, lots of young eager talent and Phil to keep us all in check, myself included.’ The sound of a smile warmed Pike’s voice, a flicker of happiness that faded back to a pensive drone. ‘I owed a lot of my early success to my crew, every captain does, but it was more than that… I couldn’t imagine having done my job without exactly those people at my side, especially One. She was… well, beyond exceptional. Smart, fearless, logical almost to a fault… Illyrian, you know. She balanced out a lot of my, well, less admirable qualities,’ Pike admitted with a huff of a laugh. ‘She wasn’t one to hold back on the bridge if she thought I was being reckless or arrogant, even if she did think me frustratingly human for getting so turned on by it.’

Despite the creeping jealousy twitching through him at Pike’s description of this flawless woman, McCoy couldn’t help but smirk privately to himself; seemed his Chris had always liked a challenge in his partners.

‘As first officers go, she was my perfect complement,’ Pike continued. ‘Needless to say, when Starfleet offered One her own ship, I didn’t take it well.’ His body tensed uncomfortably. ‘I’ll admit it now, I was scared shitless. I figured as soon as she was gone I’d start making mistakes, putting the lives of my crew at unnecessary risk because no one would dare challenge me the way she did… I had a reputation by then as one of the best captains in the fleet, even if I felt like nothing of the sort without One. I couldn’t imagine the Yorktown without her, it was like Starfleet was ordering me to disable one of her warp nacelles… so I did what I had to do to keep her.’

McCoy winced against a complicated onslaught of sympathy and revulsion. For all Pike’s confessed insecurities, there was a ruthless practicality slipped between the cracks that revealed exactly the type of leader Pike had no doubt always been. ‘So you married her,’ he said flatly.

‘Yeah.’ Pike ducked his head, staring down at their entwined hands. ‘It’s not like we didn’t care a great deal for each other. We had been lovers for a few years by then… it was more practical than anything, and neither of us minded wandering elsewhere whenever we got the chance on shore leave, so it worked for a while. Still... I don’t know, looking back, how I ever convinced her to marry me. Maybe she didn’t want to leave the Yorktown yet and was glad to have a sensible reason to refuse Starfleet’s offer. Either way, it was convenient, for a while anyway.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then… it wasn’t.’ Seemingly drained of the urge to share, Pike merely shook his head. ‘It was a mistake marrying her,’ he said decisively. ‘Phil told me as much back then and I more than know it now.’ With a sigh, he leaned back into McCoy’s chest, staring off across the desert with a pensive frown creasing his brow. ‘Do you think the same now?’

‘Sorry?’

‘About your marriage.’ 

Coming from Pike’s mouth, it sounded so harmless a question, far more simple than the ugly panic crawling up his throat at very thought of all the unexplored terrain it implied. How easy for him to ask, when Pike’s faults had been so pedestrian, so plain. That was a marriage flawed by a lack rather than an awful excess of passions. Nothing in Pike’s story implied viciously shouted accusations, entire days lost to drink and nights abandoned to Atlanta’s aimless arms. Nothing of the helpless humiliation that followed as he was so swiftly stripped bare of his profession and partner and–

‘Leo?’

He flinched, slapped abruptly loose of that old familiar fugue by the note of concern in Pike’s voice. ‘Yeah?’ he muttered, a single hoarse syllable. Pike squeezed his hands reassuringly, though it did nothing to mend his fractured nerves.

‘Was it all that bad?’ he asked softly. ‘Wasn’t there anything good to come out of it?’

A far less innocent question: one that shut him down completely if only for the sake of his sanity. ‘Even if there was,’ he said roughly, ‘it’s all gone now. No sense dwelling on it.’

McCoy hated how he could feel the disappointment in the slight slackening of Pike’s hands over his own, the heavy hanging of his head. He brushed his lips over the bow of his neck in feeble apology. ‘I’d rather be here, with you, more than anywhere else in the world right now,’ he added softly. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘Do you think it is?’ The low murmur barely reached his ear but Pike’s uncharacteristic quiet was enough to make McCoy tighten his arms around his lover, sick with desperation. 

‘It’s all I’ve got,’ he admitted miserably. ‘I don’t know what else you want.’

A faint sigh deflated Pike’s body against his own in a silent, not entirely reassuring answer. One of his hands disentangled from McCoy’s clinging fingers and reached back, rising up to comb through his hair. He bent passively into the caress, nosing the addictive scent of Pike’s skin as his fingers parted the sweating strands of McCoy’s hair and slipped down the curve of his neck. Despite the heat radiating hard beneath his own clothing, McCoy shivered as Pike toyed idly with the collar, nudging a finger between leather and skin to tug the heavy band tighter against his windpipe in the faintest threat. 

‘Chris…’ The tension gathering quick around them shifted sideways and caught McCoy at the unexpected precipice of arousal. His hands drifted hopefully lower down Pike’s taut stomach and crept beneath the hem of his shirt, but a sidelong glance to Pike’s face revealed an expression blank and merciless as the desert he surveyed with eyes that grew hard with its cruel heat.

‘It’s getting late,’ Pike murmured finally. ‘We should head back before we lose the light.’

McCoy swallowed tightly as the pressure on his collar vanished with the slip of Pike’s body out of his arms. Pivoting on his heel, he watched with trepidation as Pike loped across the dusty earth with an authoritative click of his tongue that Tango swiftly answered with an eager whinny. Tara met his eye over Tango’s bowed neck as rider reunited with his mount, dark with more wisdom than McCoy felt he possessed at the moment.

The ride back across the desert into Mojave’s terraformed green was long, but accelerated by the unforgiving pace Pike set from Tango’s saddle; he rode like a knife thrown from their origin all the way back to the ranch in the straightest, most ruthless line possible until they landed, breathless and quivering at the stable doors.

McCoy dismounted in a liquid flood of overexerted muscle, keeping a wary eye on Pike as they walked their mounts into the cool relief of the stable. No words passed between them as they drifted in opposite directions to attend to the more urgent needs of the horses; it was far easier to guide Tara to the water trough and ease her overheated body than to confront the uncertain barrier of Pike’s silence. He poured all his anxiety into grooming Tara with meticulous care, his worry growing larger as he feared that his unsubtle delay would only heighten Pike’s strange turn of mood.

Sure enough, he had scarcely finished with Tara and turned to see if Pike wanted a hand with Tango only to find Pike waiting on him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

‘Took you long enough,’ he snapped. McCoy faltered, stared back.

‘Sorry?’

‘You will be.’ He advanced a threatening step. ‘Strip.’

A complication of responses slammed through him at the abrupt command: shock, indignation, but arousal most of all, hard enough to make his knees buckle beneath him. Rather than drop to the ground, he let the stubborn refusal lurking just beneath his skin steady his legs and slow his hands as he teasingly plucked open the buttons of his shirt.

‘Too slow.’ With an impatient growl, Pike charged at him, ripped his shirt from his shoulders with a single abrupt motion that tore a gasp from his throat. ‘You really don’t want to make me wait, Doctor,’ he warned, tugging the ruins of his shirt away from his paralyzed arms. Hands yanked at his jeans before the last scraps hit the ground; McCoy hissed uncomfortably as the rough fabric caught his cock, which sprang loose already half-hard into Pike’s hand. A few quick strokes had him fully erect and thrusting through Pike’s fingers, his shock of seconds ago already burned away by lust. He clung to Pike’s shoulders, an embarrassing whine escaping his throat as Pike snatched his hand away.

‘There’s my greedy slut,’ he purred. Pike hooked the ring on his collar, dragged him down into a hard kiss, tongue shoving deep past his panting lips. ‘My beautiful boy,’ he added in a soft murmur, ghosting light over his mouth. ‘Now, strip.’

He turned on his heel, stalked away as quick as he had come on, leaving McCoy trembling with arousal and fumbling out of his jeans and boots. He shot surreptitious glances at Pike as he undressed, saw him turn away from the riding tack on the opposite wall and survey the stable’s ceiling beams in between equally assessing glances back at McCoy as he finished stripping.

‘Put the boots back on,’ he ordered, casually commanding. McCoy arched an eyebrow.

‘Make up your mind, why don’t you,’ he muttered back, bending to pick up a hastily discarded riding boot. 

‘Just sparing your feet from these floors,’ he replied indifferently, though the look he swept over McCoy as he tugged on each boot was heated with far more interest than that. His hard gaze lingered as McCoy straightened upright again, long enough to make his cock twitch with interest before Pike broke the spell and looked back up to the rafters. His sudden indifference in favour of the architecture confused McCoy for a moment, until he spotted the coiled rope dangling from his hand. 

He crept cautiously closer to Pike, following the direction of his gaze along the ceiling. His stomach fluttered and flipped as he spotted the low-hanging chain bolted into the central beam, terminating in a heavy hook and hovering expectantly overhead. 

‘Think you’ve figured it out, don’t you.’ 

McCoy jumped slightly as fingers closed around his wrist. Forcing his gaze downward, he let Pike draw him nearer by the slow, steady pull on his arm. ‘Have I?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘No.’ Pike turned his arm upward, planted a kiss on the thumping pulse in his wrist. ‘Not yet.’ 

He wrapped the rope several times around his wrist, pulled a knot tight with a finality that stole his breath and made his dick throb harder between his legs. McCoy edged nearer as he offered up his other hand, close enough to feel the brush of Pike’s fully clothed body against his bare skin as Pike bound his hands together and yanked them above his head, looping the chain through the tightly bound layers of rope before drawing back to assess his handiwork. Shifting uncomfortably beneath the weight of that gaze and already missing the heat of Pike’s body against his own, McCoy tugged surreptitiously at the chain suspending his hands; he had enough give to avoid straining his shoulders, but little more freedom than that. 

‘You look nervous, Doctor.’

He wasn’t surprised to hear it. Standing naked and helpless like this was unnerving enough, but it was that cold and distancing use of his title that slammed like a vice over his lungs and stripped away any hope of mercy. Far from showing concern or even amusement, the slow scrutiny of Pike’s narrowed eyes measured and unmade him all at once, like a specimen awaiting its sacrifice beneath a laser scalpel. 

Biting hard on the inside of his lip, he forced his back to straighten defiantly. If Pike had no mercy to spare, he wouldn’t waste his time with useless pleading. ‘Should I be nervous?’ he asked, his voice hoarse but steady.

‘That depends.’ Ignoring his attempt to establish even a fleeting moment’s eye contact, Pike drifted around to his left, pacing a wide circle around his prey. ‘How long are you going to keep hiding from me?’

The question, sounding so strangely light for all its seeming seriousness, dropped at the same moment that Pike stepped out of his line of sight, before McCoy could see the facial expression that went with it. ‘I’m not hiding from you,’ he replied swiftly, anxiously. ‘Kinda hard to hide anything when you’ve got me trussed up like this.’

A non-committal hum met his attempted levity, killed it dead in its tracks. Lacking anything else to say or do, McCoy stilled his nervous fidgets, listening closely to the muffled snap of Pike’s boot heels on the stable floor, slowing to near silence behind him before clicking wide to his right. 

When he circled back around, Pike was drawing a dark length of cloth from his pocket, eyes downcast over a hesitant frown.

‘Do you trust me?’ 

Something twisted in McCoy’s chest, his breath catching at the unmistakable glimpse of doubt in Pike’s voice. It was a laughable question after he had let Pike go this far, had let him do far worse only last night and as good as begged for more this morning, but he didn’t dare answer with anything so flippant, not when Pike’s brow was so deeply creased with worry. ‘Course I do, darling,’ he said. ‘More than anyone.’ 

The upward glance of Pike’s eyes was almost heartbreaking in its lingering uncertainty but something harder and more determined was already squaring his shoulders and straightening the angle of his jaw. Pike slipped a finger beneath his collar and pulled him in but McCoy was already leaning obediently inward, reassuring his lover with all the sincerity he could pour into one kiss. With his hands chained above his head, he sorely missed the ability to touch his Chris but hoped that the play of his tongue and lips would be enough to ease his doubts. He hummed gently against Pike’s mouth as he felt fingertips glide up either side of his face, moaned softly as Pike pulled back, still holding his head in place with both hands.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured, and McCoy wondered why Pike would be thanking him at all when the world went dark before his eyes. He sucked in a nervous gasp as the cloth tightened across his eyes and fastened to a knot at the back of his head with a quick tug of Pike’s hands.

‘Perfect.’ He felt the warm hush of breath against his lips, close enough to taste the tenor of his admiration and arousal in that single word. Heart pounding fast, McCoy clung to that praise as the fingers slipped away from his face and dull footsteps drew Pike’s body heat away from him. Useless though it was, he tossed his head after Pike’s echo, trying to angle his hearing towards the footsteps as they moved in a wide circle around him. They were uneven, stopping at intervals accompanied by barely discernable rustlings that told him nothing of their intent. The silence thickened the longer it drew itself out, and though it grew so heavy that McCoy feared breaking some sort of unspoken rule, he nervously wet and parted his dry lips.

‘Chris?’ 

A rattle, as though the tack strung along the walls had been knocked into motion. He sucked in a tight breath, tightened his hands around the chain suspending his wrists.

‘Damn it, Chris, what are you–’ His question died on a sharp cry as a line of fire screamed across his back. Mouth gaping in a silent gasp, McCoy hung in mute shock as pain throbbed across his skin, nearly fading to a more complicated heat before a second blow cracked across the first. Whatever this was, it cut deeper than any belt, sharp as a whip against his back; another blow cut quick around his ribs and McCoy bit back a pained yelp, drew it inward instead to feed the heavier, animalistic heat billowing through his lungs as he fought to control his reactions to each fresh strike. With each desperately drawn inhale, he dissected the pain as something more controlled, less flexible than a whip – a riding crop, maybe, _yes_ , he decided as the next blow whistled through the air and cracked across his ass and McCoy whimpered tightly, partly in pain but also in frustration for being deprived of the sight of Pike wielding that crop, the loping of his stride and the chilling intensity of his eyes.

No further blows fell after that involuntary noise escaped his lips; McCoy held his breath in the sudden silence, tracking the slow click of boot heels circling him. As their rhythm fell behind him he felt the tip of the crop trace a welt across his back, so faint but threatening enough to make his breath hitch in anticipation. McCoy bowed his head, dashed his hungry tongue across his lips.

‘Don’t stop,’ he rasped.

Hollow silence met his impulsive plea. The crop teased lightly at his burning skin, tantalizing before it drew away. McCoy held his breath, awaiting the next blow, and whined deep in his throat when the whistle of its passage through air was broken not by his body, but a clatter as it hit the floor.

‘Coward,’ he muttered scornfully. 

The rush of air against his naked skin was his only warning before his head was yanked sharply backward by the hair and a gloved hand slammed down over his mouth. McCoy thrashed hard, snapping his body aside and wresting loose of the hand in his hair but then an arm locked around his waist and pulled him back into a solid, fully clothed wall. He tensed to reluctant stillness as his struggles proved useless, his protests muffled by the gloved hand that tightened around his jaw to keep his head angled backward, his throat bared. There was nothing but hot breath on his neck, no scent but the musty, feral aroma of leather silencing his mouth, paired to a hand that was already taking brutal advantage of his ceased struggling and groping at his dick. He shuddered as he grew perversely harder at that crude touch, a defiant shudder of horror coursing through his limbs as the madness of it crawled beneath his skin. He swallowed convulsively, his awareness of the collar around his neck more acute than ever. 

‘Isn’t this how you like it?’ The voice rasping low and harsh against his ear was nearly unrecognizable, thickened with a tremor of unchecked cruelty. ‘You don’t care who takes you, so long as they beat you and fuck you as hard as you need it...’

With his mouth sealed shut by that gloved hand, McCoy fought to shake his head and groaned low in his throat when even that much movement was denied him. Jaw clenching beneath his captor’s hand, McCoy braced himself and thrashed again, kicking blindly backward and growling in triumph as his boot connected with an anonymous shin. A low grunt exhaled against his neck as the other body flinched away; the gloved hand dropped away from his mouth, allowing McCoy to draw a desperate breath. ‘What the _fuck_ –’

A backhand flew across his face. McCoy cried out sharply, tasted blood inside his mouth that was swiftly staunched by leather-clad fingers filling his mouth, thick and rank against his helpless tongue. They plunged lewdly back and forth, fucking the saliva from his mouth until the leather slid slick against his lips. 

‘This is what you really are,’ that voice said coldly, forcing his jaw to open wide around his spreading fingers. ‘A greedy slut craving a hard, anonymous fuck. Bet you don’t even care whose fingers these are, whose cock gets fed to you next...’

As the fingers slid wet from his mouth, McCoy struggled to draw breath, to fuel a protest that was stifled by a thick bundle of cloth forcing itself past his lips. He choked for air, drawing harsh breaths through his nose instead as a strip of cloth bound the improvised gag into place. 

‘That’s why you’ve been hoping I would gag you, isn’t it?’ Pike hushed, so close against his jaw as he tugged the knot binding the gag. ‘You don’t want to ask for any of this, you just expect me to give it to you, expect me to guess even if you won’t tell me what you need or why...’

He shuddered as fingers closed around his cock, eyes crumpling shut behind the blindfold as he fought to find something familiar in that rough, proprietary touch. One hand was wrapped around the base, fisting him lazily while leather fingertips played with the head of his dick. McCoy bit hard into the cloth gag, repressing whimpers as that detached touch thumbed his slit and spread moisture tauntingly thin over his sensitized flesh.

‘I really should let Adam have his turn with you,’ Pike muttered as he fondled McCoy’s cock. ‘I’ve seen how he looks at you... should I call him over? He might not be far... hell, he might be watching us right now, who knows what he might do if I just walked off and left you hanging here...’

A muted whimper fought to escape McCoy’s throat as his legs were kicked savagely apart. A denim-clad knee shoved hard between his naked thighs and held him open as one gloved hand, now slick and cold, clawed into the cleft of his ass. ‘And I just might do that if you keep carrying on the way you do. You wouldn’t know who was touching you, probably wouldn’t even care,’ he growled as his slicked fingertips plunged at his hole, forcing their way inside. ‘You’d probably love to have a second pair of hands to keep you in line...’ His fingers pulled out, shoved in thicker to an impossible width. ‘Another cock to fill you up...’

In a delirious rush of lust, McCoy was desperately grateful for the gag in his mouth. Not Adam, but another man alongside his Chris, younger than either of them but so much more like his lover... he slammed the idea deep down, lost it in the intense stretch of four leather-clad fingers tearing him open, so much like the threat of Pike’s fingers inside him last night. This time, when the tip of Pike’s thumb teased the distended edge of his hole, McCoy didn’t even attempt to make a noise of protest; his teeth clenched into the cloth gag, breath tearing hard through his nostrils as he accepted the intrusive push upon his flesh.

‘Good boy... just like that,’ Pike murmured, lips brushing his collarbone, and the faint praise loosened the last knot of resistance deep in the heat of McCoy’s body. With a shuddering sigh, he hitched his thigh higher up on the support of Pike’s leg and let his head roll back as he relaxed into the thrust of Pike’s gloved hand inside him. The mouth breathing so close to his throat latched onto the thump of his jugular, just above his collar, and began to suckle hard enough to bruise, possessive enough to quicken McCoy’s struggling breath and melt his limbs into their bonds. 

He moaned softly into the gag as Pike abandoned his cock, now throbbing impossibly hard and upright against his belly and traced leather fingertips over a heated welt across his ribcage, following its stinging path to his waist. His hand fell to rest, an anchor planted in the soft vulnerability below his lowest rib as Pike withdrew his fingers from McCoy’s gaping hole. ‘You’re so gorgeous like this,’ he breathed, lips brushing hot against his jaw. ‘You have no idea…’ Fingers dragged heavy at his trembling thigh, urging his leg off the ground. McCoy blindly obeyed and hooked his calf around Pike’s hip, leaving his other leg quivering to support his weight on the uneven ground. Scrambling for balance, he felt the nudge of Pike’s hard cock up against his entrance, so enticingly close to penetrating him if only he could angle his hips just so…

‘Nice try, but you can do better than that…’ McCoy could hear the smirk in Pike’s voice but the hand that closed around the back of his other thigh struck a panicked note through his overexerted body. The second sharp tug at his leg nearly made him lose his bearings entirely and tore an embarrassing yelp from his throat.

‘ _Trust me._ ’ The plea hushed over his ear, so raw and sincere that McCoy had to choke back a rush of feeling before he could find quite the right sequence of thought that would let him surrender his last connection to the ground. Holding his breath, he clenched his unsteady hands around the chain and prayed it would hold his weight as he let Pike hoist him off the ground. 

His other leg joined the first, clinging tight enough around Pike’s hips to make his thighs ache. Without remorse, he dug the heels of his boots hard into the small of Pike’s back, hoping that and the firm grip of Pike’s hands under his ass was a secure enough foundation to chase down the contact he craved. He blindly bowed his head, inhaling the reassurance of his familiar scent as Pike spread him wider and arched his hips upward. Pike’s slicked cock pressed harder, slipped over his perineum and stabbed shallowly inside him with an ease that made McCoy cringe behind the blindfold and bury a pathetic moan into what felt like Pike’s shoulder. The rough invasion of those gloved fingers had left him gapingly ready for this, more than he should have been though Pike only growled appreciatively as he thrust sharply home. 

‘Perfect,’ he hushed, teeth scraping over McCoy’s shuddering chest as he pushed steadily into his body. ‘Like you were made for this… made to take my cock…’

Utterly exhausted and stripped down to pure want, McCoy could only agree with the mute acceptance of his body, could only hang on and let himself be fucked as deep and hard as his lover, his keeper demanded. His legs clung tight to restless hips, his throat choked with harsh animal grunts as he was taken so fast, split wider by Pike’s cock. He whined faintly as his own helpless dick rubbed tantalizingly between their bodies, so slick with sweat but so far from relief. He fought to summon up whatever strength was left in his shaking thighs, desperate to pull the hard flexing of Pike’s abdomen against him but the angle of his torso kept him frustratingly out of reach, kept McCoy pleading for release in muffled whimpers that scraped his throat raw.

‘Fuck, yes...’ Pike groaned raggedly as his thrusts grew more erratic and wild. One of his hands released its hold on McCoy’s ass, dragging up his heaving back and awakening the throbbing welts crossing his skin. His fingers caught the sweating length of his hair, grabbed on tight and pulled _hard_ , hard enough to wring tears from his eyes behind the blindfold as his head was wrenched backward, collared throat bared to a stinging, possessive bite that pushed McCoy viciously over the edge, his dick pulsing against Pike’s belly in helpless spasms that wrung him dry. Drained and thoroughly used, he surrendered any effort at supporting his own weight, sinking down into the last savage thrusts of Pike’s cock as it flooded him full of come seconds later. His release seeped out of him with Pike’s reluctant withdrawal some immeasurable moment after, dripping messily over his shaking thighs.

His legs buckled weakly beneath him as they met solid ground, leaving McCoy’s depleted body hanging heavily by his wrists. He moaned softly at the strain on his shoulders, whimpered his gratitude as Pike wrapped an arm around his waist and drew him close, encouraging him to lean into his solid frame with a gently gliding hand along his spine, stroking and speaking as low as he would to Tango.

‘Hold on, beautiful… I’ve got you…’ Pike reached up, and a slight tug and rattle of chain was all the warning McCoy had before his arms dropped like lead weights, before his body crumpled in a clumsy fall of limbs that dragged Pike down to earth with him. He grunted as he landed hard in the uneven shelter of Pike’s lap, grateful that the gag was muffling anything more embarrassing. All the same, Pike hushed him as he gathered him closer, curling a suddenly bare hand into his hair and tugging the knots of the gag and blindfold free of his head. McCoy blinked rapidly with eyelashes clumped with salted damp, tried to hide his stained face against Pike’s shirt as soon as the saliva soaked rag was plucked gently from his mouth. 

‘No… none of that…’ A sigh shivered close to his ear. ‘Easy, beautiful… here…’ His other hand, also stripped of its glove, crept down between their bodies to McCoy’s bound hands. Wet, scraping pain throbbed through his wrists at Pike’s first tug at the rope; McCoy winced, bit his lip to hold back a moan as Pike drew back to take a closer look.

‘Damn…’ Following Pike’s gaze, McCoy shared in his flinch as he saw the red stain smudging the pale rope and thickening to a sluggish trickle against his skin as Pike tugged frantically at the knots binding his wrists. He hissed as the coarse fibres peeled away from his scraped flesh, though his clinical mind was already detaching from the damage he could see through a dizzying tunnel of cold reason.

‘I’m so sorry…’ Pike’s fingers hovered over his wrists, wary to touch now he had uncovered what he had done. ‘Fuck… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’

‘Leave it.’ Exhausted satisfaction blunted the edge of his pain as he folded himself into the comfort of Pike’s body, keeping his hands sheltered close to his chest. ‘I’ll fix it later…’

‘You shouldn’t have to.’ Pike’s arms closed around him, squeezing him close. ‘I shouldn’t have let it go this far… I’m sorry, _I am_ ,’ he repeated sharply as McCoy murmured a wordless dismissal. ‘This isn’t how I meant to ask… I don’t need to know, I swear…’

McCoy nodded mutely into Pike’s shoulder, layering his comfort into the brush of his lips over the hammering pulse beneath the fragile flesh of Pike’s throat. It was the least, and the most, he could do when he still didn’t know what he had done to push and pull his lover through to this strange impasse in the first place.


	5. Chapter 5

Perfection looked something like this: the sun warm against his face, a mint julep beautifully chilled in its glass at his side, the dermal regenerator steady and controlled in his hand. The rest of his body was slouched into the wide settee on the porch, uncoiled around the focus of his right hand slowly healing the last of the abrasions on his left wrist. His peace was nearly perfect, the faint hum of the regenerator broken only by the nearby murmur of voices, of occasional laughter.

His left wrist healed, McCoy reset the dermal regenerator to begin work on the right, paused to take a sip of his drink, and glanced up from his calibrations at the sound of boots on the flagstones. Pike climbed the low steps onto the porch, radiating a quiet happiness that was no doubt related to the silver cigarette case clasped protectively in his hand.

‘Got your fix, then?’ 

His disdainful drawl only seemed to widen Pike’s smile. ‘They don’t get any fresher than this,’ he said as he looked up from his prize. ‘Adam ships some over to me once in a while, but it’s never the same.’

Instinctively, McCoy’s eye darted aside to squint after the retreating shape of Adam’s broad shoulders. ‘That so,’ he murmured. With a shake of his head, he passed his regenerator into his left hand and set it to work on the exposed sub-dermal layers of his abraded right wrist. Once cleaned and disinfected, the damage was trivial at best, but Pike still stared at his wrist with a dark frown that McCoy decided was best ignored for now.

‘Can I help?’

‘Are you a doctor now?’ He glanced up from his work with a sardonic arch of his eyebrow that softened immediately at the sight of Pike’s expression, his happiness of mere seconds ago deflated into concern and even guilt. ‘Sorry,’ he sighed, ducking his head with a flush of embarrassment. He bit his lip, suspended the regenerator’s first cycle. ‘Here…’ 

If anything, he felt even more foolish turning over his regenerator – as if he wasn’t perfectly capable of operating the damn thing with either hand – but as Pike accepted the instrument and curled in next to him on the settee, McCoy knew he had done the right thing. Pike gently took up his right hand, pressed a kiss to his fingers before switching on the regenerator and resuming its progress on his wrist. McCoy watched him attentively, noting the careful patience with which he circled the energy field around the wound’s circumference, neither rushing nor lingering too long.

‘You’re pretty good with that,’ he admitted after a long silence, not a little surprised.

‘I’ve had to be, the places I’ve been.’ Without prompting, Pike switched to the dermal setting and began smoothing skin back into being. ‘Not every away mission comes with a medic.’

‘Right,’ he agreed, fresh shame piling itself upon the old. ‘Of course… I’m sorry,’ he repeated, staring sadly into the introspection that had furrowed Pike’s brow and darkened his eyes to slate. ‘I should’ve realized…’

‘There’s no need.’ Pike’s thumb brushed over his knuckles, stilling his words. ‘I’m not trying to prove a point,’ he murmured mildly, absorbed in his task, ‘I just want to help if I can… there.’ With a hint of a satisfied smile, Pike switched off the regenerator. ‘Better?’

McCoy scrutinized his work, finding no hint of a bruise or welt left behind. Impressed as he was by Pike’s newfound medical ability, the sight left a strangely hollow pit in his gut, an aching absence where he would have preferred a reminder, something to quicken his blood once they returned to their separate lives. Still, he offered Pike an encouraging smile. ‘Not bad, darling,’ he teased lightly, though not well enough to smooth the faint crease hovering between Pike’s eyebrows.

‘Should I do these too?’ Pike’s fingertips trailed up his arm to the bruised skin ringing his elbow beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt. ‘They look worse than yesterday… and your back, it must be…’

‘It’s fine.’ He drew his arm back from Pike’s touch under the pretense of reaching for his drink. ‘Are you just angling to get my clothes off again?’ he asked, relieved to see Pike’s concern dissolve into a low chuckle.

‘Could you blame me if I was?’ His thumb brushed the edge of his collar, slow and deliberate. ‘I have half a mind to strip you naked right now,’ he murmured, thick and intense as his eyes tracked down McCoy’s body. ‘Seems such a pity to keep you covered up on our last evening here…’

A fine shiver of arousal slipped beneath McCoy’s thin t-shirt, as though Pike had already sliced it away with his gaze alone. His lips parted instinctively beneath the sweep of Pike’s thumb, though his eyes slanted anxiously sideways. He could still see Adam lingering to greet the black horse at the edge of the paddock from their view over the grounds. ‘Not exactly private,’ he murmured. 

Pike followed his gaze across the field, and gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Nothing he hasn’t seen before.’

His eyes snapped back to Pike, wide and alert. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked sharply. The echo of Pike’s hushed threats earlier in the stable slammed hard through the back of his mind, snatching the air from his lungs.

‘He’s used to seeing all sorts by now,’ Pike said mildly, seemingly oblivious to McCoy’s suspicions. ‘We weren’t much better behaved in our younger days.’

If the reference was intended to distract McCoy from asking too direct a question, it worked. ‘So you two were... are...?’

Pike cocked an eyebrow. ‘Ex-boyfriends? Sure, you figured that out already, didn’t you?’

‘Took a wild guess more than anything,’ he replied grudgingly, disappointed as Pike’s hand fell away from his lips. ‘You sure did play it coy.’

‘Not as coy as never asking outright,’ Pike threw back with a roll of his eyes. ‘But since you’re finally asking… yes. First boy I ever kissed, first… well, first everything, really.’ His gaze shifted outward towards the paddock, his smirk softening to something more distant and fond. ‘It was mostly two horny boys fooling around, you know how it is…’

McCoy scowled as he reached for his drink. ‘Not really,’ he admitted, thinking back on his own teenage years of careful negotiation to even get his hands under Jocelyn’s shirt. Little wonder he had gone to med school full of pent up frustration ready to be unleashed through hasty blowjobs swapped with classmates. Maybe that was what Pike meant.

‘I could tell you, if you’re so curious.’ Pike nudged closer alongside him on the settee, slid a confident hand up between his thighs. ‘If you want to hear about the first time I went down on my knees, hungry for another boy’s cock in my mouth...’

McCoy choked back a groan as Pike cupped him through his jeans, gave his stirring erection an encouraging squeeze. ‘Hungry for Adam’s cock, you mean,’ he added, his words tight as Pike’s clever fingers teased out the hard ridge of him through increasingly taut denim. Through narrowed eyes, he could still make out Adam’s tall shape as he reached up to rub the black horse along its wide muzzle.

‘Adam was the first, yes.’ Staring out into the field, McCoy was startled by the sudden closeness of Pike’s breath upon his ear, his voice a low rumble vibrating through his blood and pooling thick between his legs. ‘But he could have been any boy. I would have gone to my knees for anyone who would have let me, I wanted it so much back then...’

His gaze across the grounds failed, his eyelids faltering shut as the image seared itself against his synapses in flashes of clever blue eyes, wide and eager lips, hair that would have been streaked with sun and curling luxuriously around his fingers. McCoy bit down hard on his lower lip, eyes snapping open again as Pike unfastened his jeans and carefully drew out his cock. ‘I don’t know...’ he started uncertainly, glancing incredulously downward at the promising erection cradled in Pike’s hand. ‘I might not be able...’ But Pike hushed him with a slow upward stroke, a suckling kiss to the thundering pulse of his neck.

‘You will,’ he whispered, both an encouragement and a command. ‘If you had been that boy... I can imagine you, all impatient and moody with pouting lips begging to be bitten...’ Pike’s breath caught audibly on a faint moan, a reckless little sound swiftly stifled in a bite to his throat. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered asking if it were a boy like you,’ he growled. ‘I would have taken you down, swallowed you whole before you could say no…’

With a helpless groan, McCoy threaded his fingers through Pike’s hair, keeping his eager and explicit mouth close as he fondled him to an impossible pitch of arousal. His dick was still sore from their rough play in the stable, adding an aching note to his pleasure that soon had him squirming and panting in the settee. A satisfied laugh ghosted hot against his ear as Pike’s hand tightened around him. ‘What would have worked on a boy like you?’ he breathed silkily. ‘Should I have gently seduced you... or would I need to be more forceful...?’

His breath hitched as Pike hushed the latter choice into his ear and squeezed his cock tellingly tighter. ‘Don’t care much for pretty words,’ he groaned, bucking his hips up into Pike’s hand. ‘Tell me,’ he demanded hoarsely, surrendering swiftly to the pull of Pike’s fingers over his hot length. ‘Tell me how you would have forced me... taken me...’

Pike drew a sharp gasp against his skin but clearly understood the permission given. The fingers of his other hand slipped up to his collar, held him steady and close as his voice poured low into McCoy’s ear and his hand slid fast along his dick, weaving imaginary knots in his mind that snarled fast around the base of his spine and held him at the shuddering precipice of need before that last, filthy encouragement of Pike’s voice, so rough against his ear, sent him tumbling over the edge and into Pike’s hand.

\+ + +

Under other circumstances, McCoy might have thought that the dinner Pike was busily preparing was motivated by guilt over the afternoon’s rough play in the stables. But with the kitchen so sparingly supplied for their short stay, McCoy soon realized that the whole chicken roasting in the oven and the lavishly herbed vegetables falling together beneath Pike’s knife had been thoughtfully planned in advance.

‘Can I help?’ he asked, cringing at his awkward echo of Pike’s offer earlier on the porch but Pike only smiled and pressed a glass of wine into his hands. 

‘Just relax,’ he insisted as he returned to the chopping block. ‘It’s not often I get to spoil you with my cooking, so sit back and let me enjoy this.’

So McCoy settled back into his kitchen chair to watch, though the smile on his lips was tinged with sadness that this simplicity was so rare between them. He could get used to this, enjoying a drink while his lover fussed over potatoes and exchanging heated looks over otherwise idle conversation while passing chicken and vegetables across the table. Even clearing their plates and tidying the kitchen afterwards felt idyllic in the context of their everyday life together in which domesticity seldom played a part.

There was another bottle of wine to be opened after dinner, which brought them into the adjoining living room where Pike laid a fire in the rustic hearth, rapidly building a crackling warmth that they admired from the comfort of paired wingback armchairs angled towards the open flames. The glow of the fire and the comfort of a full belly relaxed McCoy into an easy flow of conversation, free from the sorts of questions or reflections about the past that might have kept words from drawling loose off his tongue.

McCoy had been explaining the finer points of the research he would get to tackle now the summer term was ahead of him when Pike’s conspicuous silence pulled him up short. Wincing at his own self-absorbed stupidity, he looked away from the fire that had been occupying his eyes while he spoke, readying an apology when the look on Pike’s face caught him off guard. It wasn’t irritation or boredom that had stolen his voice but something else that was difficult to read in the dancing shadows flung about by the crackling fire.

‘Chris?’

At the sound of his name, Pike blinked rapidly as though breaking free of a spell. ‘Yes,’ he said, neither a question nor an answer. McCoy raised an eyebrow, watching closely as Pike shook his head and released a low sigh. 

‘You’re gorgeous, you know.’

McCoy stared back at the fire again, hoping its glow would conceal his sudden blush. ‘At least you kept yourself occupied while I was rattling on,’ he muttered, but Pike shook his head with an embarrassed grin.

‘Might be one way to put it,’ he admitted, staring down into his wine glass and shifting anxiously in his chair. A flush was warming his face too, though McCoy couldn’t recall whether it had started with the fire, the wine or the conversation. ‘I don’t think I ever told you why I went to all that trouble to track you down, back when we first met.’

‘You were pretty damn loose with your praises at the time,’ he corrected awkwardly, raising his glass to his frowning lips. That had been half the problem at the time, being so heavily lauded for his medical accomplishments at the lowest point of his life.

‘But probably not very honest.’ Pike stared across at him, chasing a stray droplet of wine from his lips. ‘Recruiting you was Phil’s idea, naturally – I don’t know shit about who’s who in the medical world, so I only chase down candidates at his word – but there was this video archived in the dossier he sent, you presenting at some conference or another…’ He released an uneven sigh. ‘I still don’t get what the hell you were talking about, something about brain grafts… but you had this energy, this… passion. You were impossible to ignore, I couldn’t help…’ With a low groan, Pike shook his head, long fingers kneading his brow. 

‘Couldn’t help what?’

Pike glanced warily at him from between his fingers. ‘Probably beat off to that vid half a dozen times before I even found you,’ he admitted in a low mumble.

McCoy nearly choked on his wine. ‘You _what?_

‘I’m not saying I’m proud of it,’ he snapped defensively, an annoyed look crossing his face as McCoy tried, and failed, to stifle a laugh. ‘But fuck, Leo, that’s what you’ve done to me from the very start. Even when you’re talking gibberish on a tiny screen, you manage to get under my skin…’ Pike dropped his hand from his face, confronting McCoy with the full weight of his stare, so open and raw that McCoy could barely meet it; his own eyes retreated back to the fire, biting back a teasing joke as the mood between them shifted to something more solemn.

‘I must’ve come as quite the shock once you finally tracked me down,’ McCoy murmured finally, straining to recall that younger, restlessly ambitious doctor who used to have his shit together, the one who had presented groundbreaking research at conferences alongside men and women twice his age or more, a lifetime ago.

‘Yeah, like the stubble and the growling was a huge turn-off,’ Pike flung back sarcastically. ‘Bad enough that you’re probably one of the greatest medical minds of your age. Throw that in a rough untamable package, add a dirty handjob out back... fuck, I was doomed.’

Setting his wine glass aside, Pike slid out of his chair to the floor, crossed the short distance between them on his knees until he slid up between McCoy’s thighs. ‘I still don’t know how I managed to win you,’ he murmured, ‘but I’m so grateful… I hope you know that…’

‘Chris…’ Stripped of any better words, he reached for Pike’s hand as it closed over his thigh, leaning down to meet his lover halfway. Their lips melted gently together, the taste of the same wine warming both their tongues as they tangled lazily together, drawing back and diving in with slow patience. ‘Damn it, I’m the lucky one here,’ he breathed, pausing to pull back and press grateful kisses against Pike’s cheekbone, his brow. ‘You’ve done so much… I still don’t know how to thank you…’

Pike shook his head gently, their noses brushing together with the movement. ‘No more of that,’ he said, squeezing McCoy’s hand to stillness. ‘You don’t owe me anything, I just… want to enjoy this. Before we head back tomorrow.’

Eyes falling shut, McCoy inhaled Pike’s scent as he attempted to swallow down the stony weight that had materialized in his throat, burying it deep in his belly. He had almost forgotten this was ending so soon. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed hoarsely. ‘Anything you want, darling.’

‘Anything?’ Opening his eyes, McCoy nearly startled at the closeness, the blueness of Pike’s eyes staring into him. Drowning deep, he broke into a grin.

‘Of course.’ McCoy tilted his head, welcoming the faint trace of Pike’s fingers along the edge of his collar. 

‘Hold that thought,’ he murmured with a kiss before he went to the bedroom, returning moments later to collect on his promise. Despite the telling touch to his collar, _anything_ was McCoy spread out naked on a thick throw before the fire while Pike, also stripped bare to taut muscle, knelt astride his hips and massaged lightly scented oil into his skin. He groaned softly as Pike kneaded the ache that had lingered in his shoulders ever since his suspension from the stable’s rafters, squirmed as a gentler touch reached the welts crossing his back, applying just enough pressure to reawaken the memory of each blow. Each touch shivered through him, made McCoy’s fingers curl in the soft blanket, his thighs inching hopefully apart. A breath of softest laughter ruffled the hair at his nape as Pike bowed low over him to tease every secret and sensitive nerve in his neck with teeth and tongue. McCoy writhed against the blanket as his cock stirred beneath him, and bit back a moan as Pike’s oiled hands closed around his hips.

‘Down, boy,’ he urged gently, thumbs rolling slick at the base of his spine. ‘I’ll get to that soon enough…’ Pulling away from his neck, Pike ran his oiled hands further down, giving his buttocks shockingly spare attention before focusing on his thighs and calves, working at muscles aching from the long day in Tara’s saddle with a knowing precision that built itself thick upon the lust curling deep and hopeful in McCoy’s belly. He sighed softly beneath his breath as Pike closed his hands loosely around each ankle, subtly testing and manipulating the spread of his legs across the blanket. 

‘Roll over for me, beautiful.’

McCoy arched an eyebrow at him even as he obeyed. ‘Should I heel next?’ he drawled with a pointed arch of his hips as he settled back onto the blanket. The spark in Pike’s eye sharpened in tune with his smirk.

‘Think we already covered that,’ he said teasingly. Bracing himself on one powerful arm, Pike leaned over him and tugged at his collar, sharp enough to tug McCoy’s head up off the floor and into a slick, fleeting kiss. His mouth travelled over McCoy’s upturned jaw, revisiting the bruise he had bitten into his throat earlier in the stable. ‘Or, at least I tried... you’ve certainly got the marks to prove it.’

His oiled hands slid down McCoy’s chest as he nuzzled past the collar, licked across the imprint of teeth over his clavicle. Each touch of lips and fingers made McCoy shiver and moan as Pike found each trace of a bruise, a bite, the faintest trailing tip of the riding crop low on his hip. He bucked reflexively into Pike’s mouth as he licked the latter mark on his skin, bit back a whine as his stiff cock accidentally brushed his lover’s cheek. ‘Damn it, Chris...’

‘Easy, now,’ he soothed, infuriatingly calm as he drew back and reached again for the massage oil. ‘I have plans for that...’

McCoy groaned low and long as Pike’s hand, slicked with more oil, closed around him and slicked his shaft with loose, decadent strokes that further unraveled and frustrated him with each slip of those fingers over his glistening flesh. The massage oil smoothed the friction of Pike’s normally rough fingers, and with his other hand keeping his hips firmly planted on the floor, McCoy could only writhe and whimper through the slow, teasing handjob, far from any sort of relief. He threw an arm over his face to muffle his increasingly desperate moans, his other hand fisted into the blanket. ‘If your plan was to torture me to insanity,’ he growled from behind his elbow, ‘mission fucking accomplished, Captain.’

A low chuckle reached his ears as Pike’s hand, impossibly, slowed its strokes. ‘Not yet,’ he murmured. There was a breathless note in his hoarse voice, a soft hitch in his breathing that plucked a deeper note of anticipatory arousal deep in McCoy’s belly well before the heat of Pike’s body shifted above him. Peering over his arm, McCoy’s eyes widened as Pike straddled his hips, all blown pupils and parted lips as he sank down and McCoy gasped to feel a tighter, hotter pressure in place of Pike’s slicked fingers around his cock.

‘Oh... _oh_ , fuck...’ A mindless, delirious lust blurred his mind as Pike impaled himself, so damn slow and tight. McCoy reached impulsively for Pike’s hips, desperate to urge him on faster, and groaned his frustration as Pike captured his wrists and pinned them down to the floor. 

‘No,’ he hushed, low and steady as he took the last centimetres of McCoy’s cock into himself. His ass shifted subtly against McCoy’s hips as though to fully feel the stretch of his cock, a distracting little movement that made McCoy’s eyes roll back in his head. ‘No touching, no moving...’ Pike clarified between tiny gasping breaths as he rose up on his knees, sliding exquisitely slow up the length of his shaft.

‘You could have just tied me down if you wanted me to stay down,’ McCoy pointed out, a touch sarcastic and not a little bit hopeful. His head rolled aside to glance across at the belts they had cast aside with the rest of their clothes but Pike caught his jaw with gentle fingers and forced his gaze with a knowing smirk.

‘Maybe I want to see how obedient you are now I’ve had a chance to break you in,’ he replied, breath hitching as he sank back down on McCoy’s cock. ‘I could get used to this… riding you like a sex toy…’

He bit his lip, but failed to hold back a needy groan. ‘I could do more for you…’ he offered wistfully, trying to roll his hips up into Pike as he sat fully impaled but unmoving. ‘I could make you feel so good, darling...’

‘You’ll do nothing unless I tell you I want it,’ he scolded sharply with a warning glare ruined somewhat by the lust-blown pupils, the flush climbing high on his cheekbones. ‘Or else we might need to repeat some of your lessons once we get back to the Academy.’

‘Any particular… lessons?’ His question hitched on a swiftly indrawn breath as Pike’s hands braced themselves upon his heaving chest, fingertips glancing dangerously close to his nipples. Pike stared down at him, head tilted aside as he considered. 

‘I wonder if you’d be less mouthy during a spanking if I had you bent over my desk back at HQ,’ he mused softly, circling his hips leisurely on McCoy’s cock. ‘I might have a lot less bitching out of you if you had to worry about being overheard.’

Far from silencing him, the image provoked in his mind by Pike’s words forced a loud moan from McCoy’s throat. ‘Depends whether a spanking was the only thing you had in mind,’ he threw back, hips arching futilely beneath the steady weight of Pike’s body fucking down upon him.

‘You know I couldn’t beat that ass of yours without fucking it right after,’ he murmured, tugging hard at a nipple and grinning savagely at McCoy’s choked cry. ‘I’d have you right there in my office, and if you can’t keep quiet about it like a proper little cadet, I could always stuff a gag in that pretty mouth…’

With a low groan, McCoy shoved a hand up Pike’s tensing thigh, groping at the strength of his body for a blissful moment before Pike swiftly snared his wrist again and slammed it down to the floor, leaning down to glare at him.

‘Are you disobeying me already?’

‘No… no, sir…’

‘Good.’ Pike released his wrist and sat upright again, sighing softly as he sank back down on McCoy’s cock. ‘I’d have hated to have wasted all this effort breaking you in…’ he continued as he fucked himself slowly, almost indifferently. ‘Figured I’d have made a perfectly trained whore out of you by now.’

McCoy shuddered beneath the overwhelming weight of his arousal, struggling not to touch or respond to Pike’s lazy dominance. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with me if I were that easy,’ he bit out harshly, fingernails piercing his palms with the effort of keeping his hands off Pike’s lithe body above him.

‘Oh, I know I’d have to keep a firm hand over you.... a leash to go with that collar would be a good start.’ He hooked the metal ring on the collar, tugged hard enough to make McCoy twitch in the tight heat of Pike’s ass, making them both moan out loud. 

‘I’d keep you under my desk, force you to suck me off during meetings.’ Leaning down, he released the collar and shoved two fingers into McCoy’s mouth, eyes bright with arousal as he worshipped them with his lips and tongue. ‘Just like that… I’d use your mouth whenever I want it…’

Defiantly, deliberately, McCoy scraped his teeth against Pike’s knuckles, releasing a low growl as Pike snatched his fingers away. ‘And what if I refused to please you?’ he asked, shivering with anticipation as Pike swept down and sharply bit his lower lip before pressing his mouth to his ear to hush his answer.

‘I’d make you suck every man who walked into my office until you learn your lesson,’ he rasped, dangerously low. ‘Every Admiral, all of my students... I’d offer your mouth to every one of them, make sure you got all the practice you need to be a good little whore...’

Pike’s threat pouring like fire into his ear, Pike’s body so close and hot against his own... it was too much, too easy to throw an arm around his shoulders, grab a handful of his sweat-damp hair, throw them both aside until Pike was spread beneath him, still exquisitely impaled on his cock. He thrust his hips urgently into him, growled as Pike groaned obscenely loud and hooked a leg around his hips to urge him on.

‘Like hell I will,’ he snarled as he fucked Pike as hard as he could, no matter how thick and fast his blood rushed with the thought of going to his knees for whomever Pike chose, for all those cadets, for one in particular... ‘You won’t get me to obey that easy...’ He scraped his teeth along the tempting line of Pike’s jaw, licked feverishly at his panting lips. ‘Takes a lot more than one weekend to break me in…’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Pike bit down hard on McCoy’s lower lip, dragged blunt fingernails up his abused back. ‘But I’ll show you how to beg one day... you’re aching to learn, I can tell...’

He arched beneath the scratch of Pike’s fingernails, the fleeting pain coursing quick through the pleasure curling at the base of his spine. ‘You wouldn’t know where to start...’ The taunt fell instinctively from his parted lips, anything to keep Pike seething and wild beneath the quickening thrust of his cock. He was so tight, his body so hard...

‘Soon as we get back to the Academy…’ Pike choked on his words as McCoy snapped his hips especially hard, ‘fuck… I’ll have you stripped naked and tied down to my desk before you even know what hit you. I’ll...’ He broke off with a rasping groan as McCoy shoved a hand down between their bodies and seized his cock, jerking it mercilessly fast in his clenched fist.

‘You’ll what, darling?’ he hushed harshly against Pike’s ear as he fought to unravel the other man in time to his own faltering control, so close to breaking already. ‘Take me down, tie me up, beat me until I beg you to fuck me?’ Breath rasping quick from his lungs, he bit blindly at Pike’s sweating throat, his gasping lips. ‘I dare you to try,’ he snarled as his hips drove after a rhythm all their own, rough and erratic. ‘Break me, if you think you can...’

A harsh growl vibrated against his mouth, wet heat burst over his fingers as Pike clenched beneath and around him in an intense orgasm that swept McCoy helplessly into its wake. He muffled his own shuddering moan into Pike’s shoulder as he came deep in the convulsive heat of his lover’s body, nearly forgetting how to draw breath if not for the heavy thump of Pike’s heart beneath his own to remind him how it was done. His back heaved beneath the slide of Pike’s hand between his shoulder blades as he slowly regained himself from the shattered remnants of his feral lust and felt the first threads of self-reproach seeping into its place.

‘Fuck,’ he muttered into Pike’s skin, squeezing his eyes shut even as Pike’s chest shook with a faint huff of laughter.

‘You sure did,’ he murmured, limbs curling tighter around McCoy’s body rather than letting him slip loose. ‘My beautiful Leo... my lion...’

McCoy snorted to cover his embarrassment. ‘Only because you drove me to it, you manipulative bastard,’ he slurred lazily, nosing his way up Pike’s throat and into his curling hair. Something bestial still lingered in his blood, encouraging him to drink in every hint of his lover’s scent.

‘At least I know how it’s done now,’ Pike murmured. His fingers trailed up his spine, tripped along his collar before threading into his hair. ‘I’ll never break you, not like that,’ he whispered softly. ‘I’d never want you to be anything but this...’

McCoy sighed into the gentling touch of Pike’s hands, the heat of his body so comforting and close. Now more than ever, he wished he knew how to break himself open, if only for him.

\+ + +

McCoy awoke by slow measures the next morning, gathering faint impressions of warmth and closeness and equally pleasing things that finally sharpened into the awareness of Pike's mouth gently worshipping his cock.

With a bleary effort, he cracked an eye open as his hand groped exploringly downward, finding the bed sheets tented loosely over his lover’s shape. He tugged the sheet aside, smiling softly as too-awake blue eyes flicked upward to greet him. His Chris was always an obnoxious morning person. ‘This is way too early,’ he grumbled, his own typical response to which Pike offered a lazy smirk.

‘Someone down here thinks otherwise.’ He bowed his head, licking a wet stripe up the length of his fully erect cock and drawing a moan of mingled frustration and need from deep in McCoy’s belly. Blood stirring in his veins, McCoy raised himself up on an elbow to watch the meticulous tease of Pike’s lips over him. His body was poised in a loose curl alongside McCoy’s tensing pelvis, turned close enough for McCoy to run an admiring hand along the firm musculature of his back, the sharp precision of a hip bone. A low moan vibrated from Pike’s lips around him as he slid his hand further down between his legs, finding his cock every bit as hard as his own. Pleased by the faint waver in Pike’s careful control at that tentative touch, McCoy pushed himself fully upright to gain a better grip, his own arousal growing as he closed his fingers around Pike’s smooth heat and stroked slow and light, pausing to fondle the flushed crown as Pike let McCoy slip loose from his mouth with a ragged, shuddering exhale.

‘Guess you’re really awake now,’ he gasped, blue eyes flashing upward with a hint of reproach as his thighs shifted restlessly, spreading wider to welcome McCoy’s hand.

‘Your fault,’ McCoy murmured, letting go of Pike’s cock and catching his thigh instead to push him into a better position. ‘Come here...’

Mutual need made it easier to explain with touch rather than words, their bodies negotiating the wide terrain of the disheveled bed until they lay fully immersed in each other and McCoy could take Pike into his mouth while Pike continued to lick and suck leisurely over his cock. The lush distraction of both giving and receiving pleasure slowed them both to lazy exploration, hands wandering as readily as lips and tongue; McCoy slipped his fingers down the cleft of Pike’s ass, teasing at his entrance and groaning through the weight of his cock against his tongue as Pike hummed around him and sucked encouragingly harder. 

The feedback loop of sensation was slow, too calculated to be entirely sweet, and too much for either of them to resist. McCoy felt a thrill of triumph burst in his chest as Pike succumbed first, clutching hard at McCoy’s thigh and panting hard against his hip as he spilled himself upon McCoy’s tongue. His release, however, left Pike at liberty to play at McCoy’s body with single-minded focus, flipping him swiftly onto his back while the taste of his seed was still fresh on McCoy’s lips. The renewed onslaught of Pike’s hands and mouth moved without mercy, devouring his thighs, his nipples, his cock. There was a sharp tug at his collar that pulled a sharp cry from the back of his throat and cast him over the edge, a pressure that eased by gentle measures as Pike’s willing throat milked every last drop of his orgasm from his body. McCoy scarcely felt the collar vanish, so carefully did Pike slip it away from his throat.

The ache of its loss didn’t register until long afterwards in the warmth of Pike’s body draped over him as he kissed the ghostly impression of the collar’s place around his neck. ‘Alright?’ he asked gently.

McCoy rolled his head aside on the pillow, inviting Pike to follow his path further while he considered. ‘Miss it already,’ he admitted.

‘Doesn’t have to be the last time you wear it,’ Pike murmured, a hush just behind his ear. ‘Not if you don’t want it to be.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ But the smile felt absent on his lips. No amount of play in the privacy of Pike’s apartment could restore the powerful certainty of the last two days, the constant pull of a bond that was so difficult to grasp in the harsh daylight of the Academy, where he was remarkable only for his added years and cynical tongue; otherwise he was anonymous, unclaimed in the crowd. His eye tripped along the dead weight of his arm upon the bed, narrowed at the smoothly healed band of flesh around his wrist with a disappointed sigh. As though sensing his shift in mood, Pike followed the line of his arm and tangled their hands together, nowhere near tight enough to bruise.

‘We might have time for a quick ride before we have to head back,’ he suggested with a hopeful note that drew a reluctant smile to McCoy’s lips.

‘You mean I haven’t worn you out already?’

Pike stifled a laugh against McCoy’s bare shoulder. ‘I hate to admit it, but you sure came close,’ he said, nuzzling back up his neck. ‘Greedy thing.’

He closed his eyes, shivering as his fragile nerve endings responded to the brush of Pike’s breath on his sensitive neck and willing the sensation forcibly down, deep into insignificance. ‘I guess I’ll have to settle for Tara,’ he drawled sardonically as he stretched and, by careful measures, inched his body away from Pike’s tempting heat. 

‘Mmn.’ Easily, effortlessly, Pike let him go with a lazy stretch of his own before sitting up. ‘Shower?’ 

McCoy wasn’t detached enough to refuse, even though he knew that even he was too physically drained to take advantage of the shower’s steam-suffused intimacy. He settled instead for a slow exploration of his lover’s body, running soapy fingers like an addict over solid abdominal muscles and sharply defined hipbones. They touched and kissed lazily beneath the steady stream of water under the loose pretext of bathing, erotic without the expectation of anything more demanding than worshipful lips and fingertips remembering and releasing the ghost of tension rather than stirring up the thing itself.

Similarly, their last ride struck a welcome balance between their first late afternoon canter in the orchard and yesterday’s intense journey; they returned to the natural heat of desert, though time only allowed for a brief exploration of the nearest dunes before they had to head back to the stables. Every moment felt strangely precious as they returned to the shelter of terraformed green and walked the horses inside, each heartbeat of Tara’s proud body a farewell falling away beneath McCoy’s hand as he tended painstakingly to her care. He lingered over her longer than absolutely necessary, was still grooming her pale coat when he felt Pike’s visceral presence hovering nearby. He glanced over his shoulder with an apology waiting on his tongue that Pike forestalled with a shake of his head. 

‘I get it,’ he murmured, gently clasping McCoy’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be inside when you’re done here.’

‘Thank you.’ He caught Pike’s hand, squeezed it gratefully before Pike quietly withdrew, leaving him in the privacy of the stall with his Tara. Glancing over his shoulder, he waited until Pike had gone before digging out the apple in his saddlebags. 

‘Here you go…’ Balancing the apple on the flat of one hand, he stroked her neck encouragingly with the other, smiling as she eagerly took the whole thing with painstaking care. ‘You’ll do good here, won’t you…’ He trailed off with an uneasy shiver, his chest tightening as the slow, even thump of boots on the packed floor broke his solitude. He spun around, eyes widening as he spotted Adam passing between the stalls, a fresh bale of straw hoisted over a powerful shoulder. Chewing anxiously at his lower lip, McCoy watched from behind Tara’s head as Adam nudged open a nearby stall with his hip and set down rather than drop the bale to the ground, muscles straining at his thin shirt as he straightened upright and rolled his neck. Adam turned as he drew off his leather gloves, dark eyes fixing swiftly on McCoy with a slow smile.

‘Headed off today, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ Now that Adam had called out, he felt foolish huddling behind Tara like a sniveling kid at his mama’s apron strings; he drew forward to the stall door, wiping the saliva and apple juices on his fingers against his dusted jeans. ‘Chris has some sort of conference call with a bunch of other command types back at HQ later tonight,’ he explained with an internal eyeroll, ‘so we’ll be out of your way fairly soon.’

‘You weren’t in my way at all.’ Adam’s easy smile didn’t waver as he tucked his gloves into a back pocket and wiped his brow with the long sleeve of his shirt. ‘This all belongs to Chris… well, except for Veil over there,’ he acknowledged with a toss of his head towards the sleek black horse McCoy had first noticed when they arrived two days ago. ‘He just lets me keep it warm for him is all.’

McCoy offered a non-committal grunt, still struggling to reckon out how far Pike’s tendency to share his things went. ‘Must be odd for you, putting all this work into something that isn’t yours.’

‘Doesn’t feel that way, if I’m being entirely honest,’ Adam said. ‘Chris is here so seldom…’ His easy voice trailed off, and McCoy stared as that smile finally faded off at its edges.

‘How seldom?’ he asked tentatively, not sure if Adam would be in the mood to share whatever was on his mind but the other man seemed to welcome the question, his shoulders sagging beneath some previously invisible weight.

‘Haven’t seen him in a quite a few years now,’ he admitted. ‘He still comms in for a chat, checking up on the horses and so on, but he stopped coming here so much after Starfleet stuck him with that Academy post.’

‘You’d think he’d come here more often after that,’ McCoy observed doubtfully. ‘San Francisco is a lot closer than space.’

‘He tried, at first, but he never stayed long… at first I thought it was whatever the Academy had him doing, but when he was taking even less leave here than he ever did when he was in the black, I knew it had to be something else.’

‘And what did you think it was?’

Adam shrugged. ‘Never could get him to say. Though the timing… you know he transferred back to Earth after his divorce…’ He glanced up, more solemn and sincere than McCoy had ever seen him during their brief acquaintance. ‘All I know is something about you made him want to come back here, and I don’t think that was all down to her.’ Adam tossed his head in Tara’s direction; McCoy followed his glance with a frown.

‘He told me he missed riding,’ he murmured. ‘Weeks ago, when I first told him about Tara…’ But Adam shook his head.

‘It may have been a good excuse, but he could have gone riding anytime he liked these last few years. Besides,’ he added, the sly smile returning, ‘I’m pretty sure you two haven’t been spending all your stay on the trails.’

McCoy cleared his throat and glanced bashfully away, still uncertain of the charged air between them. ‘Maybe not,’ he admitted.

‘I didn’t think so.’ With a wink, Adam drew nearer, sliding into Tara’s stall alongside him. ‘Let’s call it a trade, then. I’ll take care of your lady here, if you promise to keep taking good care of our Chris.’

Adam stroked down Tara’s neck, and a strange sort of relief settled in McCoy’s chest as he saw her lean into his touch, dark eyes calm and content. ‘I reckon you got the easier end of the deal,’ he murmured, allowing a reluctant smile as Adam laughed sympathetically.

‘If it sweetens the pot any,’ he added, ‘you know you’re always welcome back. Even if that hot-shot ‘Fleet captain is too busy saving the universe or whatever he does these days, you come see Tara whenever you like.’

‘Thanks.’ McCoy stroked Tara’s brow, taking a renewed comfort in her presence, in knowing that she was his again, for more than this couple days. ‘That’s very generous of you.’

‘It’s not,’ Adam shrugged. ‘She’s yours. So long as this is her home, it’s yours as well.’

McCoy frowned faintly, thought back to that immaculate house the next hill over, so freshly scrubbed just for this few days. ‘Don’t think it’d feel like much of a home when Chris isn’t in it.’

‘Maybe not… Chris probably found it too big and lonely too,’ he allowed. ‘Guess you could always stay at mine instead.’

‘What?’ There was a flirtatious edge to the offer that pricked McCoy’s ear. He turned away from Tara, staring dumbstruck into Adam’s waiting eyes.

‘I wouldn’t turn you away, is all,’ he clarified, almost as if it were nothing. McCoy lowered his hand from Tara’s head and drew cautiously away, thinking nothing of the sort.

‘This meant to be a test?’ he asked slowly, suspiciously. Adam narrowed his eyes, and after an assessing pause, broke into another easy grin.

‘Course not,’ he said. ‘Come on, you know Chris isn’t like that.’

That gave him more questions than answers but it was the echo of his Chris’ name that rang more true than anything else. He stared down at his boots, fingers restless against his thigh. ‘I’d best get back up to the house,’ he said finally. ‘Chris wanted to get headed back fairly soon.’

‘Of course he did.’ With a wry smile, Adam advanced a step closer and extended a hand. ‘Take care,’ he said by way of farewell. ‘Of yourself and him, okay?’

‘Yeah.’ No matter his trepidation, he clasped Adam’s hand with all the good will he could muster. ‘I will, if you do the same for yourself and my girl.’

‘That’s the deal,’ Adam agreed with a smile. McCoy felt it on him as he paid a last farewell to his Tara, sensed that same gaze lingering upon his back as he left the stable and crossed the field towards the house’s private calm.

He stalled in the foyer, thrown by the two bags sitting neatly together on the floor, already waiting to be carried to the shuttle. The corridor leading back to the bedrooms was dark. ‘Chris?’ he called, pitched cautiously low.

‘In the kitchen.’

McCoy followed the faint reply through the living and dining areas of the house until he found Pike leaning against the kitchen counter, cradling a cup of coffee between his hands. A scattering of cold foods were arrayed across the dining table – more fresh fruit and the remains of last night’s dinner – but nothing in Pike’s body language invited him to sit for a meal. If anything, he might have thought Pike had been frozen in stasis as surely as any of the items in the refrigeration unit, waiting on his return from the stables.

‘You finished packing?’ he opened cautiously. Obvious, but it was the only sure footing McCoy could find from this tableau. He watched warily as Pike blinked up from his coffee, gave an absent nod.

‘Wasn’t much left to pack,’ he murmured. ‘Thought it would give us more time for lunch if I got it done now.’

He frowned, somehow doubting that Pike was harbouring much of an appetite based on the half-hearted sip he took from his coffee. ‘Sounds good,’ he offered carefully, surveying the cold chicken with a suspicious eye. ‘Should I get out some plates, or…?’

‘Thought it would give us more time to talk as well.’ Pike blurted it out abruptly, freezing McCoy in his tentative steps towards the cupboards. He clenched his hands reflexively at his sides, tried to gather up his shattered nerves from the tiles beneath his feet.

‘Is that so.’ Though it took a monumental effort, McCoy forced his head up high against whatever devastation was coming due to him after a weekend too blissful for belief. His Chris liked bravery in his men, and he would hate to be a disappointment on that front if he could possibly help it. 

‘Maybe we could sit down first…’

Gentle though it was, the offer sent a cold lance of panic down his spine. His blind hand found the edge of the nearest countertop and held on for surreptitious support, determined to bear this out better for Chris than he ever had with Joss. ‘I’m alright,’ he bit out stubbornly. 

‘You’re not.’ Pike frowned at him, already radiating disapproval beneath something impossibly tender. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not as bad as that,’ he soothed, a hollow sound to McCoy’s ears. ‘But you might prefer to sit down f–’

‘Whatever you have to say,’ he interrupted, forcing the words past gritted teeth, ‘just say it. Please,’ he added as Pike sighed and sagged back against the counter.

‘That’s the thing, Leo, I’ve been trying for weeks, and I still haven’t been able to figure out how…’ Pike began, gaze drowning in his coffee. ‘So I’m just going to say it. When I went after Tara… while I was waiting for your ex-wife at the stables… there was someone else there. A… a little girl.’

Something both hot and cold rushed straight through McCoy to the core, hope and horror tearing him apart from the inside.

‘She…’ Pike looked up, chin upright but every feature pained and sad. ‘She had your eyes, Leo,’ he said, almost a whisper.

‘What was she like?’ He croaked out the question from the ruin beneath his breastbone, staring right back at Pike but clear through him at the same time, as though he could find something of her by peering deep enough into those eyes that had had the privilege of seeing her. ‘Was… I mean, um, did she seem happy? Or, or healthy, was she… is she…’

He was only distantly aware of his legs and the tremor that had taken him from the ground up. McCoy sagged against the counter at his back but stronger hands had already taken him at the waist and pulled him forward instead. Broad hands stroked steadily up and down between his shuddering shoulder blades, urging him to _breathe_ , one wrecked inhale at a time.

‘She was amazing,’ Pike said firmly, a hard hush against his ear. ‘I knew she had to be yours, she was so much like you… gave me quite the attitude over taking away her daddy’s favourite horse. Probably the scariest kid I’ve ever met.’

McCoy laughed shakily. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said thickly, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. ‘Her name’s Joanna,’ he added, another secret name in Pike’s ear. ‘Jo… my little girl…’

His legs still felt unsteady, and gave little resistance when Pike guided him gently to the floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but McCoy was distantly grateful to have gone down like this, where Pike’s limbs could fuse freely with his shattered body, supporting him far better than any lonely chair. All the same, some uglier guilt inside him made it impossible to fully accept the comfort he was offered; he kept his arms curled tight around his queasy stomach, kept his face turned away even when Pike’s fingers combed lightly through his hair.

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’

He stared, still horror-struck, at the ceramic tile stretching open and unknown beyond their tangled feet. ‘Nothing to tell,’ he mumbled, and immediately regretted his feeble attempt at indifference, the sour taste of the lie on his tongue. ‘Joss had me declared unfit, and I had nothing to defend myself with… no credits for the lawyers, no home to take Jo to even if I’d managed to wrangle some sort of joint custody…’ He curled tighter into himself, the shame of the last two years rising fresh and raw up his throat but Pike curled a hand around the back of his neck, steadily forcing his reluctant gaze.

‘You should have told me,’ he said plaintively. ‘Once you were enlisted, Starfleet could’ve done something to help…’ 

‘You could’ve just looked at my personal record…’ But Pike shook his head, miserable and defeated.

‘I didn’t,’ he insisted. ‘Not right away. Maybe if you had the same privileges, which you don’t… it didn’t seem right, digging into your past for the sort of information that you’d have to ask for if it were the other way around.’ He drew McCoy closer, pressed a kiss against his creased brow. ‘I didn’t want to take advantage, go abusing rank… I’d hoped…’ His sigh ruffled his hair. ‘Well, I’d hoped you’d tell me anything there was to know. But after I saw her out there, once I went in to fix your records to arrange this trip…’

‘And then you found her.’ McCoy covered his mouth with his hand. ‘You must think I’m some kind of monster…’

‘I could never think that of you.’ Pike knocked the hand away from his face, planted a heartbreakingly tender kiss on his lips. ‘I know you better than that,’ he said, deep and determined. ‘I know there must be something more to it… because I know you’re not the kind of man who would willingly give up his own child like that.’

‘Except that I did.’ He dropped his brow to Pike’s shoulder, too exhausted to hold his earnest gaze. ‘I should’ve stayed nearby, tried to do _something_ … any decent father would’ve tried, no matter what. Anything but drop off the face of the earth like I did…’ _Papa wouldn’t have done it,_ his mind echoed harshly, not for the first time, but he pressed his lips tight together, refused to say it out loud.

‘We both know it wasn’t that simple,’ Pike argued softly. ‘Everything else that had happened would’ve been enough to drive anyone away from it all. Losing your daughter on top of all that…’

‘I tried to pretend that’s exactly what happened, you know.’ Now he had started, he couldn’t stop the words coming out, like an arterial bleed seeping beneath the futile pressure of fumbling fingers. ‘Did my damnedest not to think of her at all, used to think if I never stayed sober enough to remember…’ Here, at least, he hesitated, but only a moment. ‘And later, with you... used to think throwing myself into your bed might do the trick once the booze stopped working…’

An uneasy silence hovered over the admission, though Pike’s fingers continued to stroke soothingly over him. ‘Did it work?’ he asked finally, quiet and hoarse.

‘Fuck, no.’ And how stupid he had been to try, now that he could see perfectly damn well that each and every offering he had made of his body had brought him closer to this revelation, not further away. ‘And don’t you go thinking that was the only thing drawing me to you all this time,’ he added, fresh regret building thick upon old wounds, ‘it wasn’t like that…’

‘I know, beautiful.’ The weight of Pike’s head resting tiredly against his own was heavy, but more reassuring than he could fathom. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of… not your past, not us… you should’ve seen what I was like after One,’ he confided with a low groan. ‘Fucked anything that would lie still long enough, just to prove that I could.’

McCoy cracked a wry smile. ‘You got nothing to prove there.’ He pressed his lips tight, rolled his eyes. ‘I might’ve done the same,’ he admitted, ‘if anyone would’ve had me.’

‘None of that.’ Pike’s hand blindly caressed his face, traced his frowning lips. ‘I knew I had to have you the moment I saw you… or don’t I count?’ he added wryly.

‘Course you do,’ he huffed sheepishly. ‘More than anyone.’

A weighted silence met him, one that drew out long enough to make McCoy wonder if he had said too much. 

‘Tell me about her,’ Pike asked softly. ‘Please.’

Broken at last, but utterly relieved, McCoy parted his numb lips, and told him everything.


End file.
